The harim and the purdah : studies of Oriental women

MID-ri-lE RURIMH

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ELIZABETH COOPER

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CHARLES WILLIAM WASON
COLLECTION

CHINA AND THE CHINESE

THE GIFT OF

CHARLES WILLFAM WASON

CLASS OF 1876

1918

Date Due

j$p»"<^iM«^

. _ Cornell University Library

HQ 1170.C77

The harim and the purdah rstudies of Ori

3 1924 023 537 552

Cornell University
Library

The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924023537552

THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

! ^ y^

DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE.

Frontispiece.

THE HARIM AND
THE PURDAH

STUDIES OF ORIENTAL WOMEN

BY

ELIZABETH COOPER

AUTHOR OF

"MY LADY OF THE CHINESE COURTYARD,"

" THE SOUL TRADERS," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY COMPANY

(All rights reserved)

(PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN)

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . -9

CHAPTER

I. EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST . . -19

II. THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN . . -39

HI. MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY . . • 5^

IV. THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT . . .69

V. INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE . . . -85

VI. INDIAN HOME LIFE .... lOO

VII. MARRIAGE — THE GOAL OF WOMAN . • "S

VIII. INDIAN MOTHERHOOD .... I30

IX. woman's SORROW ..... I43

X. HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN . 154

XI. MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA . . 170

XII. BURMAH . . . . . -179

XIII. BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION . . 20O

XIV. THE LADY OF CHINA . . . .211

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XV. THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE .
XVI. WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE
XVII. CHANGING CHINA .
XVIII. JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME
CONCLUSION

PAGE
240

254
260
271
307

ILLUSTRATIONS

K

DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE . . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL" . 9

EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS . . I9

RAMESES AND HIS WIFE . . . . .20

A WATER-CARRIER . . . . . ■ 3^

THE TAILOR . . . . . -44

A WOMAN OF THE MASSES . . . -64

CHILDREN ON THE NILE . . . . .66

BEDOUIN WOMEN IN FRONT OF TENT . . .69

A HOLY MAN, BENARES . . . . .96

CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA .... I32

INDIAN WOMEN SPINNING .... I48

A CARRIAGE FOR WOMEN ..... 154
MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN, HYDERABAD . . . 170

HUSKING RICE IN A BURMESE VILLAGE . . . 179

BURMESE GIRL ...... 180

8 ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

dancing at a village festival, burmah . . 183

a buddhist school mandalay (showing begging

bowl) ...... 194

burmese boy with tattooed lfigs . . . i96

en route to a festival, burmah . . . i98

a burmese woman and her cigar . . . 2o6

burmese working woman .... 2o8

golden pagoda, mandalay . . . . 2io

chinese women warming hands and feet with

braziers ...... 214

chinese women and chair-bearers . . 2r8

bound feet of chinese woman . . 221

an old-fashioned chinese girls' school . . 224

wheelbarrow and coolie — used in place of wagons

in towns and country villages near shanghai 236

rain-coats of chinese workmen . . . 246

rice-boats on canal, china .... 260

japanese children playing .... 276

an outdoor kitchen in japan .... 290

INTRODUCTION

"What thou biddest
Unargued I obey. So God ordains ;
God is thy law, thou mine : to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise."

This is the creed of the woman of the East
to-day. It is the same as it has been for
centuries ; it will continue the same for centuries
to come. Indeed, it is a question whether the
Oriental woman, with all her intellectual and
social advance which is already beginning, will
be able ever tOi free herself from those traditional
and inherent influences which have been wrought
into the very warp and woof of Eastern humanity.
The Eastern woman is primarily a tradi-
tionalist. She is more closely bound by heredi-
tary tendencyj than the woman of the West.
One of her outstanding characteristics has lain
for years in her dependency and passive reliance
upon her husband for economic support and pro-
tection. iHer very seclusion means to her, not
that which the word would connote to the
Westerner, slavery or imprisonment ; to her it
is rather the mantle of protective care and
interest thrown over her by her lord and master.

10 INTRODUCTION

It has helped to make her feminine, as it has
naturally added to her inefficiency as far as any
work is concerned that bears a similitude of
masculine activity.

With the exception of the Burmese woman,
and to an appreciable and growing extent the
women of Japan, the Oriental woman has been
influenced and moulded by her economic neces-
sities. The Eastern attitude toward woman,
which in general has been to keep her ignorant
and to consider that her charms other than those
relating to her physical attractions are minute,
has brought about a feminine type peculiar
to itself. The result is a woman who outside
of the home has no power of gaining a liveli-
hood, and who as a natural consequence has
turned her whole thought, emotion, and imagina-
tion upon her domestic affairs. Furthermore,
we find in such countries of the Orient as
Burmah and Japan, where women are solving
the problem of self-support, that they have also
been able, not only to have greater freedom, but
also, to a certain extent, they have demanded
the right to choose their own mates and regulate
the laws concerning their home life. For
instance, in each of these countries the wife has
the right of divorcing her husband^a right
denied the woman of other Oriental lands. The
property rights of women in these lands, where
women are just beginning to be wage-earners,
are also clearly set forth in their civil codes,
giving justice to the women.

INTRODUCTION H

The realm of the Eastern woman is primarily,
the realm of the home. She has the true spirit
of the bee ; she considers the collective good
of the household before her own. Her great
vocation is to be a wife and m'other. She attends
personally to her household duties, and domestic
service is to her not a disgrace. Her children
are to her a veritable life-work. She looks after
them personally, superintends their every act,
and watches closely their development. Even
the high lady of the East does not consider it
demeaning to cook with her own hands that
which she knows will appeal to the taste of her
family. Cooking, indeed, is regarded as a fine
art in the East, and recipes are handed down
like heirlooms from mother to daughter along
with the family jewels.

The Eastern woman is honoured by the honour
of her household. It is her business to make
it possible for her husband and her sons to
advance, and she shines in the reflected light of
their achievements. She has not been taught,
neither has she any suspicion of the Western
ambition to make name and fame for herself.
There is a certain delight and satisfaction in
living behind the veil which one can hardly
appreciate from the Western point of view. That
this Eastern feminine regards her success as
domestic rather than social is abxmdantly proved
to any one who lives intimately, in touch with
the women of these countries.

The one great cry which goes up from the

12 INTRODUCTION

heart of every Oriental wom^n, regardless of
place or station, in any home between Algiers
and Tokio, is, " Give me sons I " It is this desire
for men-children, and the belief on the part of
the woman that this is the primal and ultimate
destiny of womanhood, that has made marriage
the universal custom' for all women throughout
the East. Rarely indeed do you find an un-
married woman. In India marriage is assured
by betrothal in early childhood ; and even in
those countries where education and Western
influence are raising the age limit of marriages
one finds no diminution in the general feeling
that woman's 'world is the home, with her children
about her .

This devotion to the purely domestic realm
has left the woman a victim to ignorance, super-
stition, and the many evils that follow in their
train. One finds the same superstition working
in the minds of the women in Cairo, in Calcutta,
and in Peking. The Egyptian mother dresses
her boy in rags to guard him from the baneful
influence of the " evil eye," while the woman of
China pierces her son's ears and places a ring
therein, to deceive the gods and make them
think he is a girl. The woman of Algiers will
buy charms and magic symbols to bring her
the blessing of motherhood, while the woman
of Japan visits shrines and holy places, where
her faith and superstition are traded upon by
those who understand the weakness of their
womenkind. She has so long been accustomed

INTRODUCTION 13

to rely upon her superstitions, her emotions,
and to use her intuition in the place of a brain,
that the present beginning's in education have
been hampered. That, however, she will prove
herself capable in the realm of mental training
is proven by the fact that, especially in Egypt
and in Japan, modern schools for girls are
becoming really popular movements in the de-
velopment of these countries. Every advance
in the education of men adds to the possibility
of intellectual emancipation for women.

During long ages Eastern women have been
denied the right to think for themselves and have
been compelled to feel their way emotionally, and
their power to feel thus has become abnormally
developed at the expense of their power to judge
or reason. The woman of the Orient is a woman
swayed by emotions, by the heart instead of by
the intellect.

There is a logical line of connection to be
traced among the modern women of the East.
Her phases of development have been the
inevitable outcome of influences to which she
has been taught to submit as a duty. Her
religious sense — the strong spiritual craving that
is deep within the heart of all women — has been
utilized as a means of influencing her to yield
implicit obedience to her mankind, whether he
be father, brother, or husband. She has made
him, in a certain sense, her god, and in yielding
all to him she has ceased to think in the terms
of her own individuality, accepting the common

14 INTRODUCTION

opinion that the Eastern woman hves for her
home and the amusement and the material com-
fort of her husband. A mental deficiency bill
was passed upon her centuries ago, and the laws
command her husband to keep her under
restraint. Her menfolks expect her to be
deficient, and have carefully guarded her from
opportunities of becoming otherwise. Her
husband has not associated her with any of
his outside life, and she has found little or
nothing in his conversation to stimulate or to
broaden her mind. Considering her as a being
who only understands her children and the petty
gossip of the women's quarters, he has deprived
her of the mental possibilities which have reached
the men of the East. He has not only tried to
teach her not to think for herself, but the Eastern
masculine has endeavoured to make her under-
stand that she cannot think. Nor is this
tendency entirely abolished by modern educa-
tion. The yoimg girl fresh from her school in
Cairo or^ Calcutta, where she has caught glimpses
of a new world, and where her brain has been
slightly awakened, marries and goes into the
traditional home, where her faith in herself is
gradually diminished by living constantly in the
atmosphere of ignorance and superstition which
still rules so largely in her woman's world.
Finally, she gives up trying, resigning herself
to the standard of the man-made world in which
she finds herself, and her husband becomes her
keeper in every sense of the word.

INTRODUCTION 15

The Eastern woman naturally tends in this
way to lose her self-reliance, which she is not
allowed to exercise. She often decides few
matters for herself, even the small details of her
daily life being settled by her husband. The
effect is insidious, but none the less relaxing,
since the faculty of responsibility, like every
other faculty, is strengthened only by exercise,
and passes away with disuse.

Can the woman of the East be awakened to
an advanced development without harm to her-
self? Within her is found an enormous amoimt
of suppressed capacity for good and evil. This
suppression, which has been her cue for genera-
tions, possesses great dynamic power. Force
becomes dangerous when confined ; it should
be directed, and unless properly guided and
controlled, when it does burst forth, as it
is bound to do with these women who are
becoming educated and learning their power,
it is likely to riot widely, with havbc.
for its effect. The Eastern woman who
has traded upon her emotional nature for her
livelihood, who has used these same emotions
to keep her husband in a land where divorce is
easy and where polygamy is practised by many,
may be guided by her feelings rather than her
intellect, using her new-found freedom to bring
her lasting unhappiness instead of the joy which
she now believes is lying just outside her doors.
In India advance has come too rapidly at times,
and the woman in her desire to slavishly imitate

16 INTRODUCTION

her sisters from the West has shocked the con-
servative traditions of her nation, and thereby
greatly retarded her cause. The Egyptian
woman when in England or France becomes
almost ludicrous in her attempts to be like the
European woman, forgetting that she lacks the
foundation of the years of freedom and equality
with men which bring judgment and confidence
to the woman of the Western world.

The woman of the Orient is awakening and
is setting herself the task to consider what is
best to be done. How can she remedy the de-
ficiency of the social life of her land? The
case is not a hopeless one by any means, even
though her capacities and wonderful possibilities
have lain dormant for so long. Many of these
women now see the things that are wrong ; they
see the iniquity of a system in which they are
not allowed to choose their own mate ; they
see the crying wrongs of their antiquated
marriage and divorce laws, made for another
period than the twentieth century— laws which
do not fit the present conditions, however suc-
cessful they may have been in other times.
These women are learning to respect them-
selves and their position, learning to appreciate
and value the weight of their majorities, and
some are having the courage to speak out.
These bolder ones are being punished for their
intrepidity ; but it does not check them . The
cause for which they are working is gradually
becoming more and more possible with the

INTRODUCTION 17

advent of education and Western influences,
which are causing the present-day educated men
of the Orient to require a certain amount of
education in their wives and daughters. As this
new order comes to the land of the Nile and the
Ganges, the old-time woman who passed her
days lounging on the divans, eating sweets,
drinking coffee, and gossiping with servants and
friends as ignorant as herself, will pass away.
The new woman of the East will never be
a suffragette ; she will never attend mass
meetings nor carry banners marked " Votes
for Women " ; indeed, it would be as incongruous
to think of these sheltered women doing su,ch
a thing as to imagine the long row of mummies
at the Museum of Cairo suddenly starting a
procession down the aisles of the museum.
These women, however, are setting up a high
standard for themselves, eager to accept all the
Western world has to offer them by way of
education and growth, while they feel that they
have the capacity to attain the objects of their
new ambitions.

In all this change, will the Oriental woman
remain the same as regards the deepest things
in her nature? Will she keep her innate sense
of modesty, her womanliness, her love of home
and children, her feminine qualities which seem
to us of the Western world almost a weakness,
but which comprise her appealing charm? We
cannot but feel that although the woman of the
East may change radically in the outward ex-

18 INTRODUCTION

pression of her life, inwardly she will remain
the same. Indeed, it would be a great mis-
take if the Eastern woman became satisfied with
any mere superficial imitation of her Western
sisters. She would lose her birthright. She
would lose the consummate opportunity of being
an Oriental in an Oriental world, and bringing
out of her treasure things new and old for the
benefit of the women of every race. Her
message to the world of the West in the devo-
tion and the keeping of the home, in the love
and pride of children, in her self-effacement for
the good of the family, is a higih message and
in no period has it been more insistently needed.
It is this contribution which the woman of the
Orient will bring in return for the education and
enlightenment from the Occident.

If the Western woman comes to the Oriental
bringing in her hands the fair gifts of intellec-
tual advancement and broadened life, her Eastern
sister will not be her debtor if she, by example,
presents in return the even more precious charms
of obedience, modesty, and loyalty which funda-
mentally are the priceless jewels in the crown
of the world's womanhood.

EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS.

To face p. 19.

The Harim and the Purdah

CHAPTER I

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST

The word Egypt opens the Book of Romance
to the traveller in the East, and he longs to
come imder the spell of its mysterious grandeur,
and gaze upon the monuments which will speak
to him of the power and splendour of a
people long since gathered to their gods. It
is a land in which to dteam dreams and see
visions. The temples, broken columns, and
great pylons call with a voice that must be heard
even by the prosaic tourist, and the hands he
sees painted upon the walls of Dend'erah or Deir-
el Bahari will beckon him when sitting in office,
club, or home, far from' the dazzling sands or
burning sun of Africa.

The charm of the land of the Pharaohs is
very real, and it is hard to speak of Egyptian
life in a calm and lucid style, or free oneself
from extravagant descriptions.

Egypt and its fascination are favourite themes

19

20 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

for novelists and writers of travel, and yet in
spite of a good deal of general knowledge we
remain curiously ignorant of the Egyptian
woman, from the point of view of her moral
and meptal developjnent. In comtnon with
women of other Oriental lands, she has been
an object of mystery to the Western world. We
know that in the olden time, in the days of the
Pharaohs, she held an important place in the
life of her world. We see her pictures on the
tombs, temples were erected in her honour, and
we know that there were queens who in their
day governed their country with dignity and rare
ability.

In former days the purity of the blood of
the royal line was assured by the marriage of a
brother and sister, the queen reigning equally
with the king. If a queen of royal birth took as
her oonsort a male not descended directly from
a royal mother, even though his father might
have been a Pharaoh, at the death of his wife he
was compelled to abdicate in favour of the son
or daughter who could call thfe queen " mother."
This was shown when Thotmes I was compelled
to resign his crown in favour of that great Queen
Hatshepsu, his daughter, who for twenty years
governed Egypt. Although her reign was a
stormy one because of her half-brothers who
claimed the throne, her name and features erased
from all the monuments, and omitted from the
official tablets and chronological records, yet
enough was left to show that her power had

RAMESES AND HIS WIFE.

To face p, 20.

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 21

been great and that she comnatodled the attention
of the world. It is said that Hatshepsu had her-
self everywhere depicted as a man, wearing the
dress and evai the beard of the stronger sex,
perhaps hoping in this way ,to gain a greater
allegiance of her people.

One of the most interesting temples along the
Nile is that of the first woman ruler of Egypt
of whom we have accurate knowledge. One rides
over the hot sands beneath a burning sun to a
series of great terraces and broken white columns
against a background of tiger -coloured preci-
pices. This beautiful temple of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, called by the Egyptians " the Sublime
of the Sublime," was dedicated to Amen Ra and
his companion gods, Hathor and Anubis, but
it was really erected to commemorate the glorious
reign of a great queen.

Another woman who influenced Egypt was the
mother of Amenophis IV, the great reformer.
He disestablished the State religion, some say
at the instance of his mother ; confiscated the
lands and destroyed the power of the priests
of Amon who were becoming all-powerful ; and
established the worship of one God.

Solomon evidently held the Egyptians in high
favour. He had many wives before he married
a princess of Egypt, but we hear of no palaces
being built especially for ajiy of them, nor of the
worship of their gods being introduced into
Jerusalem. Yet we are told that a magnificent
palace was built for Pharaoh's daughter and that

22 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

she was piermitted, although contrary to the laws
of Israel, to worship the gods of her country.

Then there was Hypatia, an Alexandrine, who
established a school of philosophy where learned
men from all parts of the world came to listen
to her words of wisdom ; and in the British
Museum there is a manuscript of the Old and
New Testament, written on parchment imme-
diately after the Council of Nice, by an Egyptian
woman, which goes to prove that men did not
possess all the knowledge nor learning of their
time.

We all know the story of Cleopatra and the part
she played in the downfall of her country, and
history abounds with tales narrating the bravery,
courage, and charm of Egyptian women.

Women are also associated with the religion
of this old land. The worship of I sis was as
general as the worship of her brother Osiris,
and this goddess is reverenced as the representa-
tion of true and loyal wifehood.

Another woman, Athor, the goddess of love,
who was called the " Great Mother " and served
as the protectress of earthly mothers, was good
and beautiful, lovely and gentle, the goddess of
love and joy. Neith was worshipped as the
goddess of art and learning. Maat was the
goddess of truth and justice ; and in ancient
times judges, when trying cases, held a small
figure of the goddess Maat in their hands, and
touched the persons acquitted with it, to show
that they had won their cause.

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 23

There was Taur, the igoddess of evil, and Sekhet,
typical of the scorching, destructive power of
the sun, and many minor goddesses whose
emblems, seen oji columns and walls of the ancient
ruins, tell us that in those days woman was
thought fit to represent Divinity.

The women of ancient Egypt were evidently
not secluded, as is shown by the story of Pharaoh's
daughter who was going with' her train of maids
to bathe when she found Moses. The story of
Potiphar's wife and Joseph would never have
been told in modem times, as a man-servant
would not have dared to go to the women's
quarters.

This valley of the Nile has always been the
home of mystery and charm. The inscriptions
on its tombs and temples have been deciphered
and receive much attention in modfem days ; but
they are not more interesting than is the woman
of Egypt, who, as we have learned, enjoyed
greater liberties and received more honour than
is the heritage of her modem daughters. It
is difficult to understand her, as even yet she
represents traditions and the habits of dead
centuries, fit toi be relegated to the past.

She is the Sphinx of this Oriental land, and will
not easily give to the world her secrets.

The Mohammedan Woman.

When first one visits Egypt, romance seems to
peer from beneath the veil of each black-robed
figure, and mystery lurks behind the intricate \

4

24 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

carving that covers the windows where one is
sure some languid beauty sits waiting for the
moment when her lord and master will be gone,
that she may wave a white hand to the passionate
suitor below.. This idea of Egypt is generally
derived from highly coloured and erotic novels
which always make this country alluring and
often sensual. To one who has been given this
highly seasoned food for his imagination to feed
upon the modern Egypt, with its great glaring
hotels, its motor-cars, its shops that might be
in London or New York, is a great dis-
appointment.

Illusions will again be lost if one is permitted
to enter the beautiful homes on the fashion-
able drives of Cairo, for they are not Eastern in
any sense, nor is there anything about them to
indicate that their owners are Orientals. They
express no individuality, and might belong to
any person of means whether in the East or
the West. The drawing-rooms are furnished in
French fashion, with gilded chairs, a grand piano,
hangings and curtains made in England or
France. Great glass chandeliers holding the
glaring electric lights express the cosmopoli-
tanism which the mistress feels she must show
the world, in order that she may not be considered
as belonging to the old school of Egyptian
womanhood.

One hears the word harim and instantly
conjures up an Arabian Nights picture of rare
hangings, subdued lights, beautiful odalisques

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 25

lounging on soft divans, slaves, incense, and a
general air of sensuousness pervading the entire
place. I read a hook not long ago written by
a well-knovm woman writer who says, " I am
thankful to say that I have never been within
a harim except twice, and the memory of that
dreadful place will rest with me for many years."
Yet she admits that on her first visit to this
" dreadful place " she had no interpreter and
could only draw upon her imagination to give
the women she saw their position in the elaborate
household. This imagination was evidently a
vivid one, as she believed that many women she
saw were " the poor deluded slaves " of the
master of the house, while quite likely they were
the innumerable relatives and woman -servants
that always throng the rich man's home.

In reality, in present-day modern Cairo, if
one enters the harim of the better class, or of
the official class, one is greeted by a hostess
dressed in the latest French creation, tea is served,
while the politics of the world are discussed easily
in either French or English by the polished, up-
to-date Egyptian women. -

The word harim is much misunderstood
by the people of the Western world. The Arabic
word harim' simply means the women's
quarters. The selam-lik are the apartments
in which the men of the household have their busi-
ness offices, receive their friends, and pass their
time, while the harim -lik are the apartments
reserved for the female members and children

26 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of the family. The literal meaning is exclusive-
ness, seclusion, privacy. In its restricted sense
it embodies the two meanings of the women
of the household and their exclusive apartments.
In the wider acceptance of the term we under-
stand by harim an established social system
deriving its sanction from a body of laws pro-
mulgated by the Arabian prophet Moliamlned.
When a woman is harim it means that she is
secluded, and we hear the expression in regard
to schoolgirls. " Yes, my daughters go to
school," a mother will say, " but they are
kept harim."

In Persia and Turkey the word zenana is
used, and in India the common form of expres-
sion for the woman who is not seen by any male
except those of her immediate family is, " She is
purdah-nashim, or simply purdah." The pur-
dah is the screen that shuts her from the outside
world, and the Oriental, whatever his race,
whether in Egypt, Turkey, or India, whether he
calls it the harim, purdah, or zenana, speaks
of it in his literature and poetry as the
" Sanctuary of Conjugal Happiness."

One can live years in the East and get little
idea of the life of the Moslem woman of the
better class. In Egypt ten million out of the
twelve million inhabitants are followers of the
prophet Mohammed, and to understand at all
the Eastern woman one must leam something
of the religion that dominates the entire life of
the Mohammedan. The actions of the Moslem

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 27

woman, whether in India, Arabia, Eg-ypt, Persia,
or Algiers, are controlled and forced to comply
with the laws made by the Arabian prophet of
the seventh century, and even to-day his word
practically governs each act of the domestic life
as well as the world outside the home.

Before Mohammed's time there were no social,
religious, nor educational institutions in Arabia,
as we understand them. Unlimited polygamy,
slavery, drunkenness, polytheism, gambling, child
murder, and plunder existed. He taught that
there was but one God, forbade child murder,
limited the number of wives to four, forbade the
use of intoxicating liquors, gambling, usury, and
gave women a definite legal status.

The reforms inaugurated by this wonderful
man effected vast and marked improvement
in the position of the women of the Eastern
world. Her status had degenerated from that
held in ancient times until her position was
extremely degraded. She was the chattel of her
father, brother, or husband, like his camel or
his sheep, ajid could be bought and sold as any
other chattel. She was an integral part of her
husband's estate and was inherited by his heirs.
The son inherited his father's wives and often
married them'. This Mohammed severely cen-
sured, and laid down most exacting laws in
regard to the women lawful for a man to marry.
He says : —

And marry not them whom your fathers have married ; for this
is a shame and hateful, and an evil way — though what is past

28 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

may be allowed. Forbidden to you are your mothers and your
daughters, and your sisters, and your aunts, both on your father's
and your mother's side, and your foster-mothers and your foster-
sisters, and the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters
who are your wards, born of your wives, and the wives of your
sons, and ye may not have two sisters.

He is severely criticizeid that he authorized
polygamy, but when one remembers the wild,
lawless people whom he governed, it seems that
he showed extreme moderation in limiting the
number of wives to four. He added that a man
might possess the slaves within the household,
Mid his followers say he was compelled to put
in this postscript in order to quiet the unrest
that was caused by the new domestic regulation
which was so contrary to all ideas then controlling
his immediate world.

He expressly stated that if a man could not
deal justly and love equally all his wives, he
must then marry but one. All true believers
quote this as meaning that Mohamtaed really
intended his people to be monogamt)us, as it was
fully known that no man could love four women
with equal ardour. The husband is also enjoined
to partition his time equally amongst his families,
and there is a saying that if a man inclines
particuarly to one of the women of his household,
in the day of judgment he will incline to one
side by being a paralytic.

He allowed women to inherit property,
although he gave a girl only half the inheritance
of a boy. A wife may inherit one -fourth of her

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 29

husband's estate if there are no children, and
one -eighth if there are children ; if there is
more than one wife, the eighth is divided equally
amongst them. A man may inherit one-half of
his wife's property in the event of her being
childless, but only one-quarter if she leaves
children, a^d neither one can disinherit the
other.

Yet the laws show clearly that a woman was
not legally the equal of a man, as it takes the
testimony of two women to equal that of one
man, and the price of a woman's life was only
fifty camels instead of the himdred camels de-
manded for the life of a man. There is a reason ^
for this other than the mere disregard of women.
•Those da.ys were lawless days, when tribe was Ij
fighting tribe ajid the non -fighting women were '(
naturally not held in such esteem as were the j
men who were needed to fight in the continuous
tribal wars.

Moslems claim' that the Mohammedan woman
is more truly protected by the laws of Mohammed
than are the women of Western countries. She
can dispose of any property that she may receive,
either from her fajnily or her husband, as she
sees fit. She is not responsible for the debts
of her husband ; she can sue and be sued ; or she
can make contracts or enter into any business
undertaking without consulting her husband ; and
she may even take him before the courts if he
does not live up to an agreement he may have
made with her.

30 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Yet this wily Eastern prophet did not beUeve
in the absiolute equality of women ; as he says : —

Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with
which God hath gifted one above the other, and on account
of the outlay they make from their substance for them ;

and he warns his followers from making too
large settlements on them or in giving them too
many valuable gifts :

And entrust not to the incapable the substance which God
hath placed with you for their support ; but maintain them
therewith, and clothe them, and speak to them with kindly
speech.

A Moslem woman is supposed to share the
responsibilities of life as well as its pleasures.
In the case of destitute parents, sons are required
to contribute two -thirds towards their support,
while the daughters must add their third. This

. is a very wise law, because Egypt, like prac-
tically all Oriental countries, makes no provision
from its public funds for the maintenance of the
poor or old. Each family must care for its own
helpless.

— Many reasons are given for the laws com-
pelling the women of Mohamtnedan lands to
be veiled and to pass their life within the inner
apartments reserved for their especial use. Some
say that Mohamtned caused women to be veiled
because of hife jealousy of his young wife
Ayesha ; others claim that the prophet, becoming
enamoured by the beauty of his adopted son's

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 31

wife, caused her to be divorced, afterwards
marrying her, contrary to the laws he himself
had made ; he wished to protect men from being
subjected to the temptation which had overtaken
him and had brought upon hirn the displeasure
of his people. But the seclusion of women was
found in Asia, > in ancient Rome, in Syria, and
even i'n Athens, long before the time of
Mohammed, It was in practice amongst many
Oriental nations from the earliest times, and
quite likely Mohammed simply adopted the cus-
toms of the people with whom he came in
contact on his conquering tours.

The seclusion of women, especially among the
nomads, can be traced to the warlike habits of
the people. In times of war the enemy would
first of all carry away the women, children, and
cattle of the tribe with whom they were fight-
ing. In order to protect the helpless they were
kept in inner rooms. The richer and stronger
the family, the more secluded were the women,
and it became a mark of caste to be kept within
the women's quarters, or protected. Thus what
first originated as a necessity became afterwards
a matter of aristocracy, and the man who could
keep his women strictly harim was looked
upon as higher in the social scale than one who'
was compelled, from economic reasons or other-
wise, to allow the females of his household to
come and go freely in the world.

An Egyptian woman, from the time when she
is seven or eight years old, never shows her face

32 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

unveiled to any man except her father, her
brother, or her husband. No chance is given the
followers of the Arabian prophet to have the
little flirtations that are so dear to the heart of
many of her Western sisters, Mohammed
says :—

And speak to the believing women that they refrain their eyes
and display not their ornaments, except those which are external ;
and that they throw their veils over their bosoms, and display
not their ornaments except to their husbands, or their fathers, or
their husbands' fathers, or their sons, or their husbands' sons,
or their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or
their women, or their slaves or their children. And let them
not strike their feet together so as to discover their hidden
ornaments.

The present-day Mohammedan woman
observes this law more strictly than was at first
intended, even to not being, seen by the father
of her husband. I know an Egyptian woman
who is never seen by her father-in-law except
on the first day of the year, when he calls upon
her to wish her the joys of the coming year.
She enters the room closely veiled and offers
him the season's greetings, then leaves without
further conversation. I was calling upon an
Indian Mohammedan woman who could not
enter the room until her father-in-law had left
it, as it would have been a serious breach of
etiquette for him to see her.

This seclusion does not rest heavily upon the
Mohammedan woman, as she considers it the
desire of her husband to protect her, and she

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 33

would be the first to resent the breaking of her
seclusion, as showing that she had lost value
in his eyes. She lives for no one except her
family, is supposed to be of no' interest to any
one else, it being a great breach of social
decorum for any male mfember of a family to
even inquire about her. A man would never say
to another man, " Is your wife well ? " 'He would
say, " Is your household well ? " And the hus-
band would never speak of his " wife " to another
man, but would speak of his " house," which
would naturally include the female occupants.

The harim is the " Holy of Holies " in thte
Moslem world. Even a police official would
hardly dare to penetrate the women's quarters in
search of a criminal. When a man has retired
to his harim he is free from any disturbing
influence from the outside world. If a friend
or enemy should call and servants would say
that the master was in the harim, the caller
would be compelled to leave or wait until the
master was disposed to enter again the selam-
lik, or rooms assigned to the male members of
the household.

The greatest evil in the harim life lies in the
dreadful seclusion and the paralysing monotony.
Many of the older women are unable tO' read
and write, and they pass their days in weary
idleness and a vacuous routine which is only
broken by visits to women friends as mentally
impoverished as themselves. Not being allowed
the friendship of the opposite sex, they are

34 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

denied the stimulation of the mind which would
no doubt result from the interchange of ideas
with men who come in contact with the outside
world. Naturally the intellectual development
is restricted, and this starving of the mentality
of the women must have a result detrimental to
the rising generation.

Seclusion also makes a woman very much
more the actual possession of her husband than
she would be if allowed to come and go in the
world, to know her rights and the means by
which to enforce them. Although the laws are
very much in her favour, in regard to property
rights especially, it takes a woman of more than
ordinary courage and intelligence to break away
from the walls which encircle her and parade
her troubles in open court. We are told of the
wonderful laws allowing the woman to dispose
of her property as she wishes ; but we are not
told that she may give this property to her hus-
band, and when once within the harim, pressure
is often brought compelling the woman to give
all that she possesses to her husband, making
her doubly helpless and wholly within his power.

They have a proverb that a woman must
always answer the call of her husband, " even
if she is at the oven." Her happiness depends
entirely upon the treatment she receives from
him. His visits to the harim are the only
breaks in the monotony of her life, and he brings
to her the only touch she may have with the
great man-world outside. By a few men the

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 35

wives are treated as if they were intellectual
equals, but these are few^ and far between. The
average Oriental treats his womenfolk as if they,
were upon a lower plane than himself, " brought
up amongst ornaments and contentious without
cause."

One would judge that, handicapped as they
are, Moslem women would take no part in the
political or social life of their coimtry, but facts
prove that they can rise to great heights and
exhibit rare courage and executive powers in
time of need. Ayesha, the favourite wife of ,
Mohammed, showed an instance of bravery and'
courage that might belong to women of any land.
When Ali, the cousin of the prophet, rebelled
against the successors of Mohammed, Ayesha
took the field against him, commanding the
troops in person at the " Battle of the Camel,"
and in later days they have shown that the re-
strictions of the harim do not deaden the fires j
that bum in women's breasts when tyranny or i
oppression rules their land.

In Persia, where Mohammedanism in its
strictest sect has sway, the vromen have been
known to rise in force and demand the rights
of their people when all the efforts of the men
have failed. In 1861, at the time of the great
famine, foodstuffs rose to an exorbitant price,
because of a few greedy, officials who were
enriching themselves at the • expense of their
starving countrymen. It was impossible to bring
the matter before the Shah by the methods

36 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

generally femployed, but the women rose, and
one day thousands of them surrounded his
carriage as he was returning from a hunting
trip, and stating the wrongs of his people, de-
manded that he should make an investigation.
The Shah was thoroughly frightened at the sight
of this unprecedented exhibition on the part of
his usually unseen subjects, and promised all
they asked, and, what was more wonderful, kept
his promise. The leaders of the party who were
causing the distress were beheaded, and the price
of bread was diminished by half within twelve
hours. It is only a few years agoi that the
women of Persia confronted the President of
the Assembly in his hall, and tearing aside their
veils and producing revolvers, confessed their
decision to kill their husbands and sons and add
their own dead bodies to the sacrifice if the
deputies should waver in their duties to uphold
the liberties of the Persian people, '

These Moslem women display a fortitude and
courage that is almost fanatical in times of
persecution. Thousands in Persia have given
their lives for their faith in Baha UUah, the
leader of a sect of reformed Mohammedans.
They have been dragged from the harims to the
public market-places, where they have been sub-
jected to unheard of indignities before having
the privilege of dying for their faith. They have
also been compelled to sit in rows facing the
public execution grounds while their husbands
and sons were beheaded before their eys, but

A WATER-CARRIER.

EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 37

even the torture and death of those they loved
did not cause them to waver from what they
beUeved to be right. The story of one woman
exemphfies the fanatical courage that will
dominate such a shut-in woman, when in some
dim, tragic hour she has been compelled to give
her contribution in the life she loved to her
religious cause. In Tabriz one day a crowd of
women were seated facing the executioner's
block, and amongst them a delicate, dainty
woman who had been protected all her life within
the harim of one of the prominent men of
Tabriz, but whose death had left his women
helpless to bear the brunt of his enemy's wrath.
Chance had made this enemy the city Governor,
and he remembered that the family of the man
he hated even in death were followers of Baha
Ullah. On this morning in June the mother was
brought to see the death of her fourteen-year-
old son, her only child. When the executioner
had done his work, the head was tossed into her
lap, and she was told " Take back your son."
She stood up, and holding the loved head in her
hands, held it towards the sky, as if to give it
as an offering to the God who seemed to have
deserted her in her hour of need, looked long
into the closing eyes, then threw it to the official's
feet, saying, " I do not take back what I give
my God ! " and turning quickly, took her place
among the sorrow -maddened women.

Her cousin, who told me the story and who
was a witness to the scene, said to me : " It is

38 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

impossible for a Western woman to understand
a Moslem woman. Perhaps because of our ex-
clusion and the lack of means of self-expression,
we have over-^developed our inner emotional
natures, which at times of sorrow burst forth like
a hidden flame. We not only gave our lives
in those dread days of Tabriz, but what is worse,
we gave the lives of those we loved— and still
lived on,"

- The women of Egypt have as yet had no
reason to rise up en mas&e and show what they
may do in times of national distress. It is unusual
for the women of any Mohammedan land to
usurp the prerogatives of men. They are funda-
mentally intensely feminine, the home their only
domain. Sa'adi, the Persian poet, said :—

No happiness comes to the house of him whose hen hath
crowed Hke a cock.

It will be many years before the Egyptian
woman joins the ranks of the militant suffragettes,
and tries to blow up the Pyramids or deface the
walls of Egypt's famoiis temples in the spirit
of emulation and zeal for the Cause.

CHAPTER II

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN

The conservative woman of Egypt prides herself
that she never leaves her home. I know several
ladies well advanced in years who say they
have never been outside their homes since they
were brought there as brides. An Eastern
household is composed of many people, and this
seclusion of the women does not cause such
loneliness as would be felt by a Western woman
if thus closely confined, always to the home.
In the East the patriarchal life prevails,
and the financially fortunate member of the
family finds himself supporting an immense
army of poor relations, who act in all capacities,
from maids in the kitchen to the servants at
the door. They expect little or nothing as
wages, but they do expect that the prosperous
member of their clan or family will provide
clothing, food, and a roof beneath which they
may live.

In all Egyptian homes of the better class
there are many servants. They are not thfe com-
petent, trained servants to which we are accus-

39

40 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

tomed, and it takes many of them to accomplish
what one well -trained servant will do in England
or America. They have no system, each ser-
vant doing his task in his own appointed time
and in his own way. Within the harim the
servants are generally women, and they are on
much more familiar terms with the inmates than
are servants in the West. They take on a feel- .
ing of equality with their mistresses, taking part j
in the conversation when guests are present,
entering doors without knocking, and generally
considering themselves as part of the family.
Mohammed taught that all true believers are
free and equal— the servant the equal of his
master. This is one of the reasons that the
traveller is often surprised by having the donkey -
boy offer his hand when saying good-bye. He
does not intend it as an impertinence ; he simply
wishes to bid his patron " God speed " in the
Western manner.

The women of the harims take much time to
dress, and spend long hours in the public baths,
if they do not possess that luxury at home.
They take great care of their skin, using all the
arts to keep it soft and xmwrinkled. They have
not yet learned the charm of beautiful hands,
and the manicurist has not yet penetrated the
harim, but it is only a question of time when
she will arrive, as the Egyptian woman seizes
with avidity every means of improving her
personal appearance.

Many of them' tint their straight black locks

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 41

with henna, by making a paste which is allowed
to dry on the hair for twenty-four hours, then
removed. This, when used not too freely, gives
a charming glint of reddish gold to the thick
hair, and utterly obliterates any trace of age.
The henna -tin ted locks are not seen as much
as formerly, as the custom is passing out with
the advent of the newer generation, and is mainly
to be seen on the older women or the women of
the desert. In former times the nails of the
hands were tinted a deep orange, but this also
is being relegated to the " things that were," as
the young girls are beginning to see that instead
of a beautifier, it makes the hands appear most
untidy. I have seen an old lady with her fingers
stained a deep brownish yellow to the first joint,
the palms of her hands, the toes, and even the
bottoms of the feet coloured with the henna
paste. I I

The house dress of the Egyptian woman is
a long neglige made in an empire form
or what we used to call a " Mother Hubbard,"
with the fullness of the cloth gathered to
a much -trimmed yoke, and ending in a
train that sweeps the floor. The wearer may
follow her fancy in the choice of goods with
which these dresses are made. The ordinary
dress worn every day is of some material easily
laundered, but the gown for gala occasions is
often most elaborate, made of rich silks, satinS;,
or brocades with great figures in gold or silver.
Many of them appear as if made of cloth origin-

42 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

ally intended for furniture covering". If she has
a wide range from which to select the material
for her dresses, she also is not restricted in the
choice of colours, as each woman indulges in
whatever shades she most admires, and a party
of women with their red, blue, yellow, and mauve
creations look like a party of animated dolls
dressed for a fancy bazaar.

The hair is braided in one or two braids and
allowed to hang down the back, sometimes tied
with strings on which dangle gold coins or balls .
A veil is always worn over the head, hanging
down to the waist line. It is very graceful and
adds to the dignity of the Egyptian woman.
With the poor this head coveringi is a large piece
of cotton with a gay -coloured border, and even
ladies wear in the morning a cotton veil, but on
dress occasions it is of chiffon or net elaborately
bordered with gold or silver, or in some cases
sewn with sequins, very similar to the shawls
offered by the vendors in front of the bigi hotels.

The feet are slipped into toe slippers that can
easily be removed when entering: the living-rooms
or when sitting upon the divans. In the matter
of footwear there is a wide range from which
to choose. From the wooden bath' clog* to the
tiny heelless covering for the toes, embroidered
in gold or silver or even tiny seed pearls, the
Egyptian woman's slipper is a thing of beauty
and dainty femininity. Stockings are considered
a superfluity while in the house, except by those
influenced by the customs of foreign lands.

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 43

If the lady wishes to make a call she dons
a black silk or satin skirt with a long train, and
over it ties a piece of black goods shaped like
a large apron hanging down the back instead
of the front. The lower end is brought up over
the head and tied under the chin, acting as hat
and shoulder covering, completely disguising the
form. Over the face below the eyes is tied a
piece of white chiffon. This is really an addition
to the woman's charming appearance, as the
present-day Egyptian woman is wearing the veil
so thin that the shape of the features can be
dimly seen, softened and refined by the delicate
chiffon, until even a plain woman takes on an
appearance of beauty that perhaps vanishes when
the veil is removed. She is allowed to show her
chief attraction, her great black eyes, which peer
at one curiously over the folds of white. They
are not so large as are the Indian woman's eyes,
but they are very expressive, shaded by long
straight lashes, which are generally touched up
by kohl, since even with the advent of modern-
ism the Egyptian woman cannot be persuaded
to relegate her kohl-pot to the lumber-room.

The woman of the labouring class, seen on
the street, is dressed in a long gown hanging
straight from the shoulders, over which, when
she leaves ter home, she drapes a large black
shawl covering her from head to feet. The veil
of this class of; woman is of black cloth, so thick
that it is impossible to distinguish the features
beneath it, and often weighted at the bottom with

44 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

gold or silver coins. Covering the nose is the
disfiguring piece of wood which holds the veil
in place. The picture of this sombre-clad wonian,
with her ugly veil and grotesque nosepiece, is
taken by the average tourist as representing the
Egyptian woman, while, in fact, she represents
only the lower class, (SUch as the wife of the
labourer, the small artisan, or the petty merchant.
These women may be seen on the streets walking
with the stately grace that is given to the woman
who carries a burden on the head, or five or
six of them may be seen sitting on a flat -bottomed
cart drawn by a much decorated donkey en route
to visit relatives or watch the festivities connected
with a marriage, or going to the cemeteries. This
last seems to be a favourite excuse for an outing
with women of this class, as it gives them' a
chance to have a good gossip on the way, and
opportunity of strolling in the open air, which
must be a great boon to the pKwr in the large
cities, as their homes are small, dark, dirty, and
most imsanitary. Yet as one lives in the Orient
and sees the conditions iimder which the igreat
majority of the population live, one grows to
believe that there are no such things as microbes,
else all these people would have been dead long
ago. ^

Even in modern Cairo one rarely sees a lady
except as she passes in a closed carriage or
limousine. Women do not go to the mosques,
as Mohammed said that women in places of
public worship distracted men from the real busi-

THE TAILOR.

To face p. 44,

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 45

ness which brought them there. They, are also
never found in restaurants, hotels, nor coffee-
houses. In fact, axi Egyptian woman never goes
to a place where she might be looked upon by
men other than those of her imftiediate family.
Even the most modern product of the present
system of education would hardly dare to be seen
in any place that was not harim. At thel
bazaars held for charity and other public func-
tions a day is set apart when the women may
visit them without danger of being looked upon
by men . An Egyptian woman told me that these
men must be educated and elevated before
Egyptian women will dare to go freely upon
the street. Even a foreign woman dreads pass-
ing the outdoor cafds, where the men turn noisily
in their chairs and stare rudely at the woman who
has the coturage to pass them'. In the case of
an Egyptian lady, I was told that these men do
not confine their rudeness to stares, but that the
low remar'ks niade to her confirm the belief that
the time is not yet ripe for the Egyptian woman \
to try to enter the world, so long closed to her.

These harim women are just beginning
to learn the joyis of shopping. Formerly the
husbands or fathers bought the goods for their
dresses, or the shopkeepers sent their assistants,
who laid the gay stuffs and jewels on mats within
the courtyards, w'here the women could make
their dhoice. But now in some of thfe larger
shops parties of veiled ladies may be seen finger-
ing the soft silks and satins, looking with curious

46 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

eyes at the hats, and selecting! the jewels with
which thtey love to adbrn themselves. Cairo is
the happy hunting; ground of the Parisian
jeweller, as Egyptian women are noted for their
love of bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and pins.
The old-time heavy gold chains and hoops are
losing their charm, and now the lady whose
husband has a purse easy to open buys long
pendant earrings set with many diamonds, brace-
lets of pearls and rubies, rings of turquoise and
sapphires, and necklaces of emeralds. Quantity,
not quality, she desires, and the colour and purity
of a stone are not so much to be desired as the
size or number. The women who make no claim
to modernism are still seen in the goldsmiths'
shops in the native streets, sitting in front of
the tiny cupboard-like holes in the wall, weigh-
ing, pricing, trying on the great barbaric hoops
of gold for the ears, or the chains with large
hammered pendants, made in the same form and
with the same design as those worn by their
mothers and their grandmothers. The merchant
does not need to originate new designs to attract
the conservative Egyptian woman who still clings
to her native jewelry. It has been the same
shape and design from time immemorial.

Another prodtict of the West has penetrated
the harims of Cairo— the French dressmakers.
Many of the rich merchants' wives and the wives
of the officials who cannot get their gowns direct
from Paris, and who are discarding the straight
empire pattern for clothes more a la mode, get

THE MODEEN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 47

their dresses fashioned by these clever French
women, who come to the women's courtyards
loaded down with fashion books, tape measures,
and a running stream of flattering talk, leaving
with many orders written in their little books. It
must be admitted that the Egyptian woman looks
best when dressed in her native costume, which
mercifully disguises the over-abundant flesh with
which most women who spend their lives within
the harims are blessed. Sweets, a sedentary
life, and many sweetened drinks conspire to make
the lady of Egypt extremely fat, after the first
flush of youth is past. This is not a sorrow to
her as it would be to her Western sister, and
when she has arrived at the age of thirty, and
the pounds that she feels should come with the
advancing years have not been added to her
figure, she sends to the chemist for a mixture to
convert her into the present ideal of Egyptian
beauty. This ideal in the olden time, if we may
judge of the pictures seen upon the walls of
the tombs and temples, was that of a slight,
willowy figure. But that ideal has changed . The
woman now seems to strive to be as wide as
she is long, and because of this fact and also
because stays are not looked upon with joy by
the Egyptian woman, who has always been
allowed an uncompressed figure, the modern dress
is not adapted to her style of beauty.

Women are not prisoners in any sense of the
word> nor are they pining behind thfeir latticed
windows as we are sometimes led to believe by

48 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

writers of fiction. They visit freely amongst each
other, and their visits are not confined to the
passing of a few senseless platitudes that gene-
rally mark conversation of Western women
making afternoon calls upon each other. They
do not "call," they go for a visit of several
hours or even days.

When a lady enters the home of her friend,
she takes off the veil and the cape -like covering
of her head, steps out of the long black skirt,
and stands arrayed like Solomon in all his glory.
They Idtess as elaborately for their women friends
as if to meet admirers of the oppogite sex, and
they spend hours drinking the delicious coffee,
sipping sherbets, eating fruits or confectionery,
and chatting over the gossip of the day. When
time for serving the meal arrives, a large tray
is brought into the room and placed upon a low
stand, around which the women group themselves
in comfortable attitudes on rugs. From these trays
they help themselves to the deliciously cooked
mutton or chicken, the vegetables and deserts
with which it is laden. Pork is never served,
as it was forbidden by Mohammted. They eat
with their fingers, using only the right hand, as
the left hand is ceremonially unclean, and after
the meal a servant pours water over their hands
from a long-spouted brass ewer, the water falling,
into a brass basin. Many of the ladies smoke,
but it is not a universal ha:bit. If they indulge
in the habit with which we always associate the
Eastern woman, it is by using a large water-pipe

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 49

with an extraordinarily long, supple stem, the
smoke passing through perfumed water and be-
coming cool before reaching the user's lips.

The Eastern 'woman loves perfumes and prefers
them niluch stronger than we of the Western
world think agreeable. A hostess will pass
around the little wooden scent -bottles, and each
guest may add as much as she wishes to her
already over-perfumed body . The mixture is not
always pleasant to sensitive nostrils . Incense and
sweet smelling woods are often burned in little
braziers and add to the congeries of odours.

Many of the old-time Egyptian women cannot
read ; indeed, it is stated that only three out of a
thousand women could read ten years ago ; their
conversation is therefore confined to the gossip
of the neighbourhood : who is married, who is
engag'ed ; the social and financial standing of
the families involved ; the presents and the trous-
seaux. Society is divided into cliques, as in any
other part of the world, and there is a decided
" Who's Who," especially in Cairo and in the
larger towns.

The woman's life seems to centre around her
children, since it is this evidence of Allah's bless-
ing that makes her greatest happiness. A great
part of their talk is involved in the discussion
of their children's ailments, the remedies, their
children's education and life in general. There
are no nurseries in Egypt, and both boys and
girls live within the harim until they are seven
years old, when the boy, if hie does not go to

50 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

school, has a tutor and lives in the selam-lik.
•When, as at present. Government schools are
established in every small town and village in
Egypt, both boys and girls go to school. The
girl is kept strictly harim even in the school,
and the teachers are women, who guard carefully
from men's eyes the girls who are entrusted to
them for the day.

Besides visiting with their friends or relatives,
the Egyptian women go to weddings, where they
look upon the dancing and hear the singing from
their places behind the screens, or they make
pilgrima:ges to the tombs of saints or holy men,
where they pray for the health of their children ;
or, if they have not been so fortunate as to have
children, they pray for that blessing. They do
not pray to the saints, as even Mohammed
himself cannot answer pra,yers, but they believe
that the austere lives passed by these holy men
will intercede for them with' the Great and One
God.

'An Egyptian friend of mine, telling me of the
efhcacy of one of the places of pilgrimage in
the cure of eye troubles, said : —

''lYes, I believe in these charms obtained at
the tomb of some of the marabouts, and I have
been on several pilgrimages, although it is not
much encouraged in our family. .You saw my
brother's wife to-day. She has visited the tomb
of every saint in the vicinity of Cairo, but it
is just because she is restless and wants to get
out. She cares no more about the saints than

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 51

you do, but it gives her an opportunity to get
away from my mother. My Hfe, that you think
so restricted, is wildly exciting to what it was
when I was a girl at home. Mother is most
conservative, and will not even allow a man-
servant near the harim. Her cook has never
seen her, although he has been in the family since
I was a baby. Here in the country, I have men-
servants who see me ^unveiled, but they, are the
descendants of slaves who were in the family of
my husband for generations, and that is per-
mitted if we are not too orthodox."

I noticed while visiting friends in the country
with this progressive, educated Egyptian woman
that if we passed an ordinary fellah, or workman,
she did not take care to cover her face. If we met
an overseer or a man above the farmer class,
she Very carefully drew her veil across her face,
leaving only the eyes visible.

The women are very superstitious, and believe
in the efficacy of charms aud amulets for every
known disease. N^rly every woman wears
aroimd her neck^ lost to sight amidst the innumer-
able chains with which she covers the upper part
of her body, an amulet or charm of some kind.
Perhaps it is a silver box containing a few words
of the Koran, or a small piece of parchment
with mystic letters written on it, guaranteed to
guard her household from harm. All Eg5rptian
women know of charms and lotions and shrines
or mystic words to give the wife who has not
presented a son unto her lord. One of the first

52 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

questions asked by Egyptian women is, " How
many children have ypu ? " If the answer is
" None ! " they cannot keep the looks of pity:
from their eyes, nor the sympathetic words of
condolence from their lips. They are also most
generous in giving talismans to remedy this de-
fect, and will wax enthusiastic over the beneficial
efifects of some favourite pilgrimage, amulet, or
prayer.

I have a piece of sheepskin with the ninety-
nine names of Allah written upon it in gold,
intended to insure, not only the advent of a son,
but also, if bound upon his ann, to guard him
from all danger throughout his lifetime.

At the opera in cosmopolitan Cairo one may
hear rustlings and low laughter from behind the
closely screened boxes, and know that an
Egyptian Bey or wealthy merchant is there
with his family, allowing them to enjoy the play
and watch the people in the house, themselves
unseen. But this joy is given usually only to
the women of Cairo, as the smialler towns have
not as yet become sufficiently modernized that
the women may igo to the public theatres. In
the conservative (homes, if a hostess wishes to
entertain her iguests with professionals, she sends
for the singing igdrls or dancing women to come
to her home, and there they perform before the
ladies, who watch them from' the divans, and talk
anid laugh with thieir entertainers, getting far more
amusement from them than by simply looking
at them on the stage.

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 53

Fortune-tellers are often brought into the
women's quarters, and blind men who chant the
words of their sacred book, the Koran. This
latter is a popular form of entertainment, and
even to Western ears the sad, minor music has
a charm, although after a time it becomes mono-
tonous to one who cannot understand the Arabic
in which the Koran is written.

Even the conservative Egyptian mother is now
beginning to see that she must educate her
daughter as well as her son, if she wishes her
to make a good' marriage. The modem
Egyptian youth does not care for an ignorant
wife who can only entertain him with house-
hold gossip when he comes from office
or shop.

There is ample opportunity given the Egyptian
girl to obtain an education, as the Government
has established schools in every city, town, and
village. One sees also, a great number of private
schools for girls, supervised by every 'imagin-
able type of mistress. The Italian, Spanish,
French, and English woman is taking advantage
of this craving on the part of young Egypt for
education. Many of these schoolmistresses are
unfitted for their work, but as yet her pupils
are not able to judge of the quality of informa-
tion they are so eagerly absoribing. The mission
schools, next to those provided by thte Govern-
ment, are perhaps the best equipped with trained
teadhers from England and America. These
latter schools are filled with bright-faced young

54 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

girls, who are taking the newer ideas to their
secluded mothers, who shake their heads dole-
fully over the new spirit of independence so
swiftly creeping into the lives of their children,
and which they fear, but to which they must
acce'de.

Egypt, in common with the entire world, is
experiencing vital changes, and her younger
women, although walled in by custom, tradition,
and habit, are eager to get into step with their ad-
vancing sons and husbands. It is only the older
woman who is the implacable foe of progress,
as she fears a change may mean the destruc-
tion of her little world. Yet she is fast losing
the power as well as the wish to resist it, aind
the number of schools for girls shows that a
real awakening to Egypt's greatest need is being
felt and met. At first the mbther feared her
daughter would be led astray from the true Faith,
but the English Government bore this well in
mind when establishing the educational system.
The Koran jand the practical observances of its
tenets are taught by faithful followers of the
prophet in the schools, and this has induced
mothers to look with complacent eyes upon the
new learning.

Infinitely better daughters and prospective
mothers come each year from the Government
and mission schools, if for no other reason than
that they tare intelligently trained in domestic
economy and in the laws of hygiene. The frig:ht-
ful waste of infant life which heretofore has been

THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 55

caused by the igaiorance of mothers will stop.
The present training of the ,youngi girl strikes
directly at this huge infant mortality and in the
coming mbther, educated and equipped for her
duties, lies the hope of Egypt.

CHAPTER III
MAERIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY

: Social Life of Egyptian Women

The Koran enjoihs marriage on all and calls
bachelors the worst of mankind. Consequently
there are few spinsters or bachelors in any
Moslem land, and a woman who is divorced or
widowed must have another husband found for
her as soon as possible.

Although Mohammed believed that 3.11 men
should be married, there were four classes of
women against whom he warned his fellows : —

A Y earner — that is, a woman who has children
by a former husband and wishes to get every-
thing possible for them from her present
husband.

A Deplorer. — One who is constantly deploring
the loss of her first husband and stating his
virtues to the disparagement of the present in-
cumbent.

K Backbiter. — One who is kind to her husband's
face and behind his back accuses him of cruelty,
miserliness, and ill-treatment.

A Toadstool. — A beauty who is lazy and tyran-

66

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 57

nical and uses all the substance of her husband
to buy silks, jewels, and perfumes with which
to adorn herself.

There is no courtship as we know it. The
marriage is made by the parents or by a " go-
between," and the parties most interested do not
see each other untU the night of the marriage,
although they ma,y liave exchanged photographs
and have heard eulogistic [descriptions of each
other. But there are no shy meetings, no
gazing into the eyes of the loved one. A
girl would be considered as lacking in modesty
and maidenly reserve if it were known that she
attempted to see the man to whom she will be
compelled to owe all allegiance and who will
practically own her, body and soul, as soon as
she is his wife.

During the time before the rnarriage the
bridegroom, if a man of wealth, sends his bride-
to-be many costly presents, generally in the shape
of jewelry, silks, fans, slippers, and boxes of
sweets. Her gifts to him are cigarette cases,
embroidered sleeping suits, a rich fez, or some
other practical evidence of her affection.

In families of any social pretensions what-
soever, there is drawn a marriage contract which
stipulates the amount of dowry and whatever
business relationships are entered into by the
husband and wife. If the amoxmt of dowry is
not expressly stated in the contract, the woman
is entitled to the customary dower of a woman
of her class, which is judged according to that

58 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

received by the other female members of her
family. This contract can also contain a stipula-
tion that the husband may not marry another
wife so long as the present wife is living with
him, and it also often states that the wife may
divorce her husband for certain expressly stated
causes.

There are two kinds of dower, one called
" prompt " which is all paid at the time of the
marriage, the other where only part is given at
that time and the rest retained to be paid in case
of divorce or on the death of the husband. In
the latter case the dower must be paid befotre
the other debts of the estate are settled. The
wife has absolute rights over her dower and can
refuse to go to her husband's home until it is
paid.

The trousseau is provided by the father of the
bride, and the articles she takes to her new home
in the shape of fumitiire, jewelry, etc., are her
property and can be taken with her if she should
return to her father's home or if she should
be left a widow. The bridegroom is supposed
to help pay the expenses of the elaborate feasting
which lasts from three to seven days, and which
is often a great drain upon the resources of both
families. Custom has commanded that no parsi-
mony shall be shown at this time of rejoicing,
and each family tries to outdo its neighbour in
the form of entertainment offered to its guests.

Theatrical entertainmentsi are held in the court-
yards, or in the large guest-room. Dancing

MAKKIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 59

girls dance and jugglers perform, while food is
most plentifully provided, but there is no drinking
of intoxicating liquors in the home of a follower
of Mohammed. In the place of wines, sherbets,
fruit juices, and coiffee .axe served,

'The culmination of the festivities comes when
the bride in a gaily decorated carriage is con-
ducted to her new home. In the streets of any
large city one often sees these processions, the
band leading the march, dozens of singers pre-
ceding the carriage, and friends following, all
trying to show their joy in the happy event.

According to Western ideals there is one great
bar to the lasting happiness of the Moslem
woman, and that is the question of divorce. It
is said that 90 per cent, of the marriages in
Egypt end in divorce, and that two people who
live to an old age together without one of them
being divorced are rarely found. Mohammed
has been severely censured because of this great
blot upon the pwrogressive laws he made for his
people, but before his time there was no check
on divorce ; a man could divorce often and for
no reason, and a woman was helpless. This
wise man laid down laws far in advance of his
time on this subject, and (what was then an un-
heard of thing) allowed a woman to divorce her
husband for explicitly stated causes.

If they divorce for mutual incompatibility — that
is, if they both agree to it— there need be no
question of the courts ; but if the wife wishes
to be free and the husband will not permit it.

60 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

t

the woman may go before a judge - and state
her case, and if her charges are proven she will
be granted her petition. Often a woman
will return her dower or agtee to forfeit the
part not yet paid, or in niany cases make a money
payment to the avaricious husband in return for
her liberty, A case not long ago came before
the judge where the husband treated his wife
brutally in order to force from her a certain
sum of money in exchange for her freedom.
The woman paid the sum demanded, then took
the case before the judge, and proved that his
cruel treatment would entitle her to a divorce,
and the courts compelled the map to return the
money to his ex -wife with an added gift.

The different sects have different modes of
procedure. One requires the husband to pro-
nounce the words of divorce once in a single
sentence and not live with his wife for three
months, when the divorce is accomplished.
Another form requires that the words be pro-
nounced three times in succession at the interval
of a month, the divorce becomingi effective when
the last formula is pronounced. Another formula
allows the husband to say three times in suc-
cession, " I divorce thee ! I divorce thee I I
divorce thee ! " and the legal separation takes
place.

A woman may say to her husband, " Give me
a divorce in exchange for my dower," and if the
man will say, " I do," a lawful dissolution of
the marriage is effected.

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 61

Whatever the rule, divorce is very easy for
the Moslem husband, and the woman lives in
constant fear that she will hear the words " I
am discharged from the marriage between you
and me," and will be compelled to return to her
home. This insecurity of the marriage bond
causes the woman to hoard what money she may
obtain, and takes: away the interest she might
otherwise have in the affairs of her husband,
fearing that propperity may only mean that he will
yearn for a younger and more beautiful woman
to share with him his riches. It also makfes
her try in every, way toi preserve her beauty,
buying cosmetics and talismans that clever mer-
chants assure her will aid in retaining the love
of her husband.

In the event of divorce the woman is com-
manded to remain single three months, but the
man may marry imtnediately. There is no
especial disgrace attached to. divorce, yet the
woman's value is lowered to a certain extent, and
quite likely she will not be able to make so good
a marriage again.

No child under two years may be taken away
from the mother, as ^the Koran comtoiands her to
suckle the infant for that period. Unless it is
proved that she is totally unworthy to bring up
her child, or unless she marries an unbeliever,
the boy is entitled to live with his mother until
he is seven years old, and the girl until she is
nine, when the father takes the guardianship of
them both. Often they are allowed to live on

62 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

indefinitely with the mother, especially the girl,
if the father marries again and the new wife
does not wish the care of the children of her pre-
decessor. This makes the blirden of divorce fall
heavily upon the innocent children, as the mother
generally marries and her husband may not care
for the children of another man ; consequently
they are left in the care of the mother's parents
or other relatives, who quite likely consider them
a superfluous addition to an already overcrowded
household, although the father is compelled to
contribute towards their support.

If divorce is prevalent in the Land of the Nile,
that other great domestic evil, polygamy, is
slowly dying out, mainly for an economic
reason. All the wives in a family are supposed
to have equal support, and in these days, when
the women of Egypt are beginning to know and
crave the luxuries of life, it is hard for a man,
imless of the very wealthy class, to provide for
more than one family. In a rich household each
wife would demand, not only her own suite of
rooms, but quite likely her own house and staff
of servant^, and she wou,ld see that her husband
did not show favouritism in regard to clothes,
jewelry, or amusements towards the women and
children in his harim. Often in poorer homes
one sees two wives living in peace together, but
the man with more than one wife is becoming
rarer each year. It is said that not one man in
fifty has more than one wife. The cynics say
that it is because divorce is so much easier and

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 63

cheaper, but we believe that it is because of the
higher ideals that are coming to the Egyptian
along with the education that he is receiving from
the Western world.

It is easy for the Western mind to take exag-
gerated views of the unhappiness of the life in
the harim. I foimd, among the better classes,
with whom I came into contact more than I did
with the very poor, the same average of happiness
that prevails in any land. Seclusion which seems
so dreadful in our eyes has grown to be a matter
of caste, and the older women, at least, have
no desire to depart ftom it. The power of the
husband is greater than it is in foreign lands,
but he is generally a kindly man who leaves the
women's department strictly alone, to be ordered
as his wife desires. It is she who has charge of
the children while in infancy, teaching them or
having them taught the Koran, taking them with
her on visits to friends, and being with them much
more than does the average Western mother of
the same class, A middle -class Egyptian woman
does practically the same things as does the wife
of a middle-class Englishman. She cooks,
washes, mends the clothing, keeps the house, and
sews her children's dresses. If she is able to
have servants— and one is very poor in Egypt not
to be able to afford at least one servant— the work
of the household is superintended directly by the
mistress. Of course she m'ay noit go to the market
nor to the shops, but she inspects the food when
brought to the house by thfe vendor or the cook.

64 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

The care of the clothing' is a great task if there
are many sons in the family who dress in the
native costume, which is made of light -coloured
silk ; the long black cloak is prone to sweep
up the dust of the streets. The children of the
poor wear only a short shirt until they are about
six years old, but the children of the rich don
European dress, either madfe in the house or
bought in the shops, llie ready-made clothing
has found its way to the harims and saves the
mother much work, as the sewing-machine is not
so well knowji there as it is in the homes of the
West.

Although the Egyptian woman is not seen in
the mosques, she is very religious, and more
zealous in the faith than is her husband, who has
a chance to broaden his religious views by coming
in contact with people of other beliefs. 'The
wife does not observe the prayers as strictly as
does her husband, but she has been taught her
Koran in childhood and follows its precepts to
the best of her ability.

The woman, like women all over the world,
is much more rigidly ruled by her superstitious
beliefs than is the man. She attributes the extra-
ordinary phenomena of Nature to the work of
good or evil spirits and believes in placating
them or controlling them as far as possible.
These evil spirits are liable to lurk in all places,
in the ovens, the wells, and even in the markfet
basket, which is covered to protect it from the
evil eye of covetous passers-by, or to guard

1

|! ^ i ict ii.ii j« i'-« ^r;i m <M ' ' I ' ll,

A WOMAN OF THE MASSES.

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 65

it from a wandering spirit who may be seeking
a place of retreat.

The women in general are very ignorant in
regard to all sanitary laws, and there is an enor-
mous amount of preventable sickness within the
harims. Children are allowed to eat what and
whenever they wish, and sweets are indulged in
at all times. All babies suffer from eye trouble,
mainly caused by uncleanliness . A baby is not
washed for eight days after birth, then if the
father or mother is suffering from any form of
skin disease, it is considered fatal to put water on
the child. Flies and mosquitoes abound, carry-
ing contagion to all. Doctors are imknown
amongst the poorer class, and the mothers are
in the hands of unskilled midwives at the time
of child-bearing, and the mortality is great.

When the angel of death enters the household
of an Egyptian, it may be known by the wailing
of the women. The custom of weeping and
wailing, beating of the breasts, and tearing out of
the hair still prevails on the death of the member
of a family. The body is buried within twenty-
four hours. It is enclosed in a coffin which
is covered by a rich shawl or piece of
embroidery and carried to the cemetery on the
shoulders of men, preceded by blind men chant-
ing the Koran and followed by friends and
relatives. The same cerernony is observed for
the women as for the men.

The soul is supposed not to leave the body for
three days. The first night an angel whispers

5

66 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

in the ear of the deceased, " What is your faith ? "
and the soul must answer, " I am a Moslem."
The angel agaiji whispers, "In whom do you
believe?" and the soul will answer, "I believe
in the One God," and the third question is,
" And who is your prophet ? " and' the answer,
" Mohammed is the Prophet of God," allows the
soul to be left in peace.

Three days, seven days, and forty days after
death memorials are held at the home of the
late deceased, when friends call and ofifer their
sympathy, and food ajid money are distributed in
great quantities to the beggars. At times of
festivity or mourning the poor come in crowds,
and are Xiever turned away empty-handed. There
are practically no almshouses in Egypt, nor any
organized charity, but Mohammedans are com-
manded to give one-twentieth of their income
to the poor. Whether they follow this law exactly
or not, they are vary generous to those in need,
not giving with much discernment, but always
willing to dropi a coin into the outstretched hand
or to fill the empty bowl.

One cannot judge of the life of the average
Egyptian woman by living only in Cairo, where
the note of modernism has sounded with such call
as to reach even the inner rooms of the harim,
but in the smaller towns of Egypt one sees the
real Egyptian life, untouched by the customs of
alien lands.

I visited in a home on the banks of the Nile
and watched with interested eyes the life around

MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 67

me : saw the mother attend to her household
duties in the morning, giving the servants direc-
tions for the day's work, measuring and weighing
out the stores to the cook, and taking his accounts
as he came from the market-place with the day's
provisions. An old blind woman came in the
morning to give the children their lesson in the
Koran. She would start a surah, thfen the
children would repeat the remaining verses in
a sing-song voice, the slightest break in the
intonation calling forth a rebuke from the leader,
whose nodding head kept time to the chant. At
nine o'clock the older children took their books
under their arms and started for the village
school, in the same noisy manner as do our
children at home. I watched the fellaheen as
they lifted the water from the river to irrigate
the thirsty fields, and saw the black-robed
women filling their water-jars and placing them
upon their heads with a beautiful sweeping ges-
ture, walk gracefully away to their little mud
huts that could scarcely be distinguished from
the sands around them.

Trains of camels passed our wall on their way
to the distant city, and the shepherd boys drove
their flocks of sheep and goats in search of
pasture. I remembered Browning's beautiful
David, who sang :—

And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as one after

one
So docile they come to the pen door till folding is done.

68 THE HAKIM AND THE FDRDAH

They are white and untom by bushes, for lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's

bed.
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us — so blue and so far.

We watched the little boys ridb the great un-
wieldy water buffaloes to the water side, slipping
off their backs to allow them, groaning with
content, to wallow in the sluggish waters, and
when the hard white stars came out in the
sapphire sky, we looked far over the Libyan hills,
which had changed from the gold and opal of
sunset to the grey blue that heralds the coming
of the Egyptian night. The evening breeze that
always comes with the setting of the sun brought
the smell of the desert to us, and the deep swish
of the Nile came as an accompaniment to the
cry of the muezzin from the tiny mosque in the
distance, and we saw its response in the fellah
kneeling beside his waiting camel, lifting his
hands to the heave^is, as the clear, bell -like voice
came over the evening air : —

There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.

CHARTER IV

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT

" Behold the townsman," cried one of the
Bedouins, " they have for the desert btit a single
word, while we have a legion."

The desert, which in many eyes is a wilderness
of desolation, has for the dweller beneath the
tents another aspect. It is the desert which he
loves, where he was born, under the brown tents
of his tribe where he hopes to pass his life,
and in the sands where he wishes to be buried.
He loves each one of its many phases, from
the sand burnt to powder by the white fire of
the noonday sun, to the cool breeze of the dying
day, that causes the smoke from the many fires
to rise in blue -grey wreaths to the evening sky,
which changes from violet to greyer blue, and
then to the intense dark blue of the precious
sapphire.

The Bedouin, to whatever tribe he may belong,
sitting astride his camel, padding softly through
the desert sands, sees before him the low black
tents of a desert village, and knows that he may
descend and find a welcome. The host will say

70 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

to him, " Every stranger is an invited guest,
and the guest while in the tent is the lord
thereof." He may sit before the large round
bowl of mutton and eat his fill, and when the
stars have come out, and seem' so near that
he may put up his hand and pluck them
from their field of blue, he will be conducted
to the guest-tent or to the tent of the headman,
and, wrapping himself more tightly in his long
cloak, he will lie down secure, knowing that
his life is safe so long as he remains a guest of
the tribe, having eaten of their salt and drank
their water.

These Arabs of the desert are proud with a
pride we do not understand. They are proud
of their long lineage, of the purity of their blood,
of their unbroken traditions. They are an
impulsive, restless people, who, with their emo-
tional temperament, give impetuosity to every-
thing which they touch. They are the real
adventurers of the world, and their nervous, high-
strung, daring characteristics have become so
absorbed into their very being as to have become
permanent marks of their race. At the seat
of all troubles, in countries where the Bedouins
are strong, one finds them ready to do and dare
anything that appeals to their imagination. At
the rising of a Mahdi, it is the Arab of the desert
who is his strongest support, who will die for
him, who will sweep down like a holocaust upon
the people who do not share with him his beliefs
in the cause, for which he throws his life away

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 71

with a bravado that makes men of a piore sluggish
blood gasp in astonishment. This cause must
appeal to his emotions— those same riotous
emotions which never produce, but always ruin.
•We are told that the Bedouin is the author of
complete desolation, and that destruction follows
in his pathway ; that his effects are always
sinister, and that this race brings ruin to any
land where they have been permitted to have
full sway. -We know he is not a creature of habit,
and that routine, a settled existence, a fixed round
of duties, are things which he does not understand
nor practise. 'He idoes not reason and is not
practical, yet it is the Arab that has succeeded
in sending the faith of El Islam around the
world, and every movement of revival comes
directly from the desert.

Few people travelling in Egypt or Algeria see
the real dweller beneath the tents. There are
Bedouins in the cities, and one soon learns to tell
them, with their keen eyes, their eager faces,
and majestic stride, from the more placid, self-
satisfied Egyptian. But in the city he is not
his true self, as life in the cities has a permanent
and degrading effect on the character and
physique of the race ; the fire of the desert dies
within him. It is in the shifting sands beneath
the tents that he is at his best. There he carries
out his tribal customs, and there he practises
that wonderful virtue of hospitality that
Mohammed, himself an Arab, laid upon his
people. He said, " Whoever believes in God

72 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and the Resurrection must respect his guest ;
and the time of his being kind to him is one day
and night ; and the period of entertaining him
is three days ; and after that if he does it longer,
it benefits him more, but it is not right for a
guest to stay in the house of a host so long as
to incommode him." It is said that even a
deadly enemy may come to the tent and demand
water and salt, and it will be given him, and
he will be allowed to rest for the night. In
the morning he will be sent on his way, and his
life is safe until he has passed the boundary of
the tribe's dominions, then his enemy is entitled
to follow him and kill him if he can.

All tourists passing through Egypt look
forward to a few days passed in the desert. The
guide paints in glowing colours the wonders of
the sands, the colours of the evening sky, the
sounds of the hobbled camels as they wait for
the morrow's march, and the traveller from the
West decides to see for once the life of which
he had read and dreamed so many years. In
every soul is a cry for romance, a desire to leave
the prosaic everyday life which he knows too
well, and explore the mysteries of the unknown,
hoping that there by chance he will find food
to feed his himgry imagination. A trip to the
desert does this for many people. There the
broker or the banker, with the wife he has looked
upon for many years, sit in front of their hired
tent, and watch the camel man, as with scolding
voice he prepares the growling, surly camels for

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 73

the night. When all is quiet but the distant
barking of the dogs, they sit in front of the even-
ing fire and watch the stars come out in the
sky that seems a great inverted cup of blue
above them. The camel drivers, dragomen, and
guards sprawl in easy attitudes and chant mourn-
ful, weird songs that have come to them from
the Persian mystics of olden time. These people
from New York or London do not realize that
they are not seeing the real desert nor the people
of the desert. The setting is all staged most
carefully by the wily dragoman, who imports his
Bedouins from the neighbouring villages, who
dresses tents until they would cause the man who
calls them home to stare in blank amazement
at their tawdry hangings. The only thing he
cannot import is the wonderful dessert sands, the
sky, the cooling breezes that always come when
the sun has set. These are free for all, to the
ragged camel driver as well as to the man who
scatters so freely the English gold.

We had the pleasure of knowing the chief
of a large tribe of Bedouins, and from his castle
on the edge of the desert were permitted to make
many visits to these picturesque people. Our
first glimpse of the true man of the desert was
obtained from the visitors in the guest-house,
where any Bedouin could stop from one to three
days as the guest of the chief, and every day
about sundown strange white-robed men with
guns strapped across their back rode up on
horses and dismounted at the gate, craving the

74 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

hospitality of the chief. There were always from
ten to thirty guests within the rest-house, men
looking like the Senouisses, who cause so much
trouble for the unbelievers of foreign lands. We
were told that many of them were going to join
their brothers in Tripoli to fight against the hated
unbeliever. They were not permitted by the
Government to go openly, as Egypt was supposed
to be neutral, so they took the long caravan
journey of thirty days across the desert to aid
in what they considered an unjust war against
the true faith.

Within the harim of my hostess were rooms
set aside for travelling Bedouin women, but they
were seldom occupied, as the women of the tents
are not wanderers like their husbands, unless the
whole tribe moves. My hostess was a young,
educated girl, to whom the confines of a Bedouin
harim must have been very wearying. The laws
concerning the women of the tribe were very
strict, one being that a woman must stay within
her apartment until the birth of her first child.
My friend was not blessed with children, but
had been compelled to conform to the usages
of her husband's family, in part at least, by
remaining within her home for a year. Now she
went about freely among the villages of the
Bedouins near the castle, only taking the precau-
tion of being veiled. These Bedouin women
were quite another type from those seen in the
cities. They had magnificent physiques, tall and
supple, and carried themselves with a stately

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 75

grace. They were dressed in long, straight,
cotton gowns of blue or black, and a many-
coloured sash was wrapped around the waist.
The only foot covering was the anklets of silver
that fell down over the instep ; and they wore
over their hair, which was braided in many
braids, and in which was plaited small gold coins
that clinked as they moved their heads, a veil
of black with a coloured border, or of dark red
with a yellow border. This veil adds to the
dignity and beauty of a woman in a most
charming manner. At the time of feasting or of
gaiety the plain veil is changed for one sewed
with bright-coloured beads or sequins.

From the lower lip to the neck, and lost in
the covering of the dress, are three dark blue
lines of tattooing. This is seen now only on
the older women, and is being thrown on the
altar of modernity by the daughters of the
Bedouins who have peeped into the world and
are trying to be like their more sophisticated
Egyptian neighbours. The hair is straight and
black, and with many has been given a tinge
of red by washing it in hernia. I saw no grey-
haired women ; because those who have been
touched by the finger of time, kindly custom
has allowed to dye their locks, and there were
many flaming heads above wrinkled faces.
While a guest with the Bedouins, they were quite
determined to give me the touch of red that
to them is so beautiful. They say it keeps the
hair cool and prevents it from falling out.

76 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

protecting it from the burning sun. I resisted,
although I watched the process, which was most
interesting. The henna powder is mixed with
water until the consistency of a paste, and then
the head is covered and left for the night, when
in the morning it is washed, and if not applied
too thickly there is just a glint in the dark locks.
Henna is also applied to the nails of the fingers
and toes, and with many it practically covers the
fingers to the first joint, making the hands look
most uncleanly to European eyes. The inside
of the feet and the palms are not forgotten by
the Bedouin or the Egyptian woman who has
conserved the customs of her mother, but the
henna-dyed hands are rarely seen now by the
newer generation, who have relegated the henna-
pot to the lumber-room along with the tattooing-
ink. A great mass of jewellery was worn, not the
diamonds and rubies found in the French shops
of Cairo, but the true ornaments of a barbaric
people. Great hoops of gold were in the ears,
one from the top of the ear, another hanging
from the lobe. The neck, even to the waist -line,
was covered with chains formed of balls of gold
or of coins, and on the arms were bracelets. In
writing coldly of the Bedouin woman, her tattoo-
ing, her henna-coloured hair, her kohl-blackened
eyes, and her massive chains of gold and anklets
of silver, it seems as if she were living in an
age of barbarism, yet it is becoming to her
rich colouring, and she is not over -dressed.
They all belong to the time and place, and

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 77

are made for these women, who need strong
settings for their savage beauty.

The women of the desert are much more free
to come and go than are the women of the cities,
and it is only when they come in close proximity
to an Egyptian village that the Bedouin expects
his wife to be secluded. They do not mix with
members of the other sex as do the women of
the West, because that is contrary to the instincts
of all Eastern women, but naturally they cannot
be confined so strictly within the tents as can the
women who live in houses. In each tent is a
division or curtain, behind which the women retire
when men approach, but they may be seen sitting
in front of their doorways, and passing to and
fro in the villages without veiling their faces.
They pass their spare time when not occupied
in the household duties in weaving giaily coloured
blankets, striped red and yellow and black.
These constitute the woman's fortune. My
friend took me to one tent in which there were
forty of these blankets piled around the edge of
the tent, and she said, " Five or six of these in
the possession of a woman and she is considered
rich in this world's goods. This woman is a
multi-millionaire." She was an old woman who
seemed to be the leader of her village. It was
she who met us and conducted us to the guest-
tent, which was at least twenty by thirty feet
in circumference, and which was hung with these
beautiful hand-woven blankets. The sands were
covered with rugs on which we sat, and on which

78 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

the large round tray was placed for the meal
which the kindly hospitable women insisted that
we should eat with them. There are no tables,
beds, nor chairs. The Bedouin says that we
can never understand the desert until we get
close to her, rest our feet on her sands, and
our head on her bosom —

But man is earth's uncomfortable guest
Until she takes him on her lap to rest.

One thinks of a tent in the desert under the
pitiless sun as a most uncomfortable place of
retreat, but I found it quite the opposite, as the
strong wind, that seems to be always trying to
temper the actions of its enemy, blew over the
desert and entered the open flaps, and crept under
the tumed-up edges of the tent, fanning into
flame the fire of sweet-smelling woods that had
been kindled in the tiny brass jar. Water was
hanging in porous bottles and in sheepskins in
the draught, and when mixed with the perfumed
syrups was cool and refreshing. Coffee with a
touch of ambergris in the cup was served, and
melons were given us in great cool slices. These
latter are a favourite fruit of the desert people,
I presume because of the vast amount of water
of which they are composed, and water is the
luxury of all luxuries to those who dwell among
the sands. An old Arabian poet said : " There
are seven things when collected together in a
drinking -room, it is not reasonable to stay away.

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 79

A melon, honey, roast meat, a young girl, wax
lights, a singer, and wine." Twice during our
visit was perfume sprinkled over us, and the
brass brazier was often replenished with sandal-
wood, a small packet of the latter being
given us as we were leaving. The Arabs, in fact
all Eastern people, love perfumes, and they use
them in far greater quantity and of stroriger
essence than we consider delicate. Musk and a
heavy perfume distilled from jasmine and roses
seems to be a favourite. Mohammed himself
loved perfumes, and speaks of them in his
promises to the faithful who shall fall in battle :
" And the wounds of him who shall fall in battle
shall on the day of judgment be resplendent
with vermilion and odorous as musk." We
visited the smaller tents, and in some it was
impossible to stand erect even at thfe ridge pole.
In one was a young baby wrapped in white cloth
and twined with yards and yards of cameFs-hair
rope, only his tiny head and feet protruding to
show that there was a real baby in the bundle.
He was bound practically the same as are the
babies of our North American Indian. I took
him in my arms, and he stared at me with great
black eyes, and then he laughed and cooed, much
to the delight of the young father, who stood
proudly by. The mother was quite a young girl,
not more than fifteen years old, I should judge,
and in her shyness she retired into the security
of the tent, resisting all my friendly overtures
to have her picture taken with the baby in her

80 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

arms. Children abounded ; there will be no
race extinction of the Bedouins so long as they
remain in their deserts. Their little brown
bodies snuggled up to us, and their black eyes
twinkled saucily as they shyly held out their
hands for the gifts which evidently my friend
always brought with her. They were a much
better type of children than are those in Egyptian
villages— strong, pretty bodies, and without the
unhealthy eyes that are seen so much on the
young in Egypt.

In every tent was hung a gun, as robbers are
frequent visitors, and each dweller in the tent
must protect his own. He keeps a fierce and
noisy dog that sees a stranger far across the
sands, and one is folloiwed far beyond villagie
confines by these canine police.

Polygamy, is practised by the Bedouin more
than it is by his city, brothers. I visited in the
tent of a woman who was the second wife of
her husband, the other wife living in a tent
adjoining. She had two children, and the first
wife one, and from what I heard there was not
the most pleasant relationship between them.
Divorce is also one of the evils, and these primi-
tive men take advantage of it to an alarming
degree. Nearly every one I met had been
divorced some time or other. It was such a
common occurrence that it produced no feeling
of shame in the woman who had been divorced.

The Bedouins are so proud of their lineage that
they wish to keep the tribal blood pure, and it

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 81

leads to intermarriage. Cousins are frequently
married, and often a whole tribe is related in
some manner. I was told that the Bedouin
settled an argument with a scolding or recalci-
trant wife by giving her a good chastising with a
stick. While in Cairo I met a most charming
Bedouin who had left the sands for the gaieties
of the city. He was quite the polished gentle-
man to be found in any city, and I was surprised
when told that he had divorced his Bedouin wife
because she was not as progressive as his cosmo-
politanism now required, and my gossipy friend
informed me, " They used to quarrel dreadfully
and he would beat her most frightfully." I saw
the lady in question, who had returned to the
tribe and remarried, and I rather admired the
hardihood of the somewhat effeminate man who
would dare to try to beat this great stalwart
Bedouin woman, who looked as if she would take
an active part in any chastening that might be
passing around her tent.

There is no such word as " privacy " in the
Bedouin vocabulary ; their private life must be an
open book to all the tribe. Their one great
blessing is the wonderfully clear, dry air, which
gives them health and vigour and makes then!
immune to many of the diseases that afflict their
Egyptian neighbour. But if they leave the
desert and go to live within the cities, they fall
easy victims to the great white plague, tubercu-
losis.

The Bedouins are followers of Mohammed, but

6

82 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

they put their faith in holy tombs and charms
and sacred groves. They are not so strict in
regard to prayers as are the people who live
within call of the muezzin, and the religion of the
women seems to be more superstition than
worship of a God. They placate a God who
may do them harm, and they have innumerable
charms and amulets for the guarding of their
children. In the desert whirlwinds they see
sweeping across their sands are " ginns " and
evil monsters ; and at night, when a star shoots
across the dark blue sky, they believe it is a dart
thrown by God at an evil genie, and they whisper,
" May God transfix the enemy of the faith."
Around the naked children's neck is hung a small
box containing some quotation from the Koran
that will guard them from the evil eye, that curse
most dreaded by all mothers of an Eastern land.
For every evil that man is heir to, the Koran is
the cure. A few words from its precious pages
are bound upon the arm of the camel driver, who
feels that with this as guardian he will not be lost
upon the trackless sands. When ill, the wife
will call the astrologer, who writes a few words
upon a piece of paper, and soaking it in water,
gives it to the wailing child, and the mother is
assured that all will soon be well, because has
he not drunk of the very fount of wisdom, the
words that came from God?

The old custom of a life for a life prevails in
the desert, and feuds are handed down from
father to son. If a father or brother is killed, it

THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 83

is the duty of the son or brother to take the life
of the enemy of his house. In the olden time
there was blood money which could be paid,
although it was considered a cowardly thing to
accept it. A man's life was worth a hundred
camels, a woman's only fifty, but the man of
honour asked the life. The chief of the tribe
has the power to decide in all cases between his
people, and the English Government does not
materially interfere in the life of the Bedouin.

In regard to the custom of taking a life for
a life, there is a story told of how in the early
days the missions made a convert from
Mohammedanism, the only convert made among
these tribes. In a blood feud a man stabbed
his enemy, but not fatally, and fleeing to the
tent of a friend he lingered there many days.
This tent was one visited by the missionary of
the Christian faith, and while lying on his bed
of pain the wounded man heard of a faith that
said, " Love your enemies," and before his death
he sent word to his tribe that they must forget
his death and not try to avenge it. He even sent
word that he forgave his enemy. This was so
astonishing that neither could the man who killed
him nor his tribe believe the fact, and secretly
the enemy decided to find for himself what had
caused the unheard-of message to be brought
to his tent. He learned of the new religion that
said, " Revenge is Mine, saith the Lord," and
he became the only Bedouin convert to the
Christian faith.

84 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Living in this home on the edge of the desert
we saw the real Hfe of the tent people. We
watched them as, weary and tired looking, they
returned from their long journeys. We saw the
trains of laden camels as they started for the
distant cities. We saw the shepherd boys drive
in the flocks of sheep or goats, looking as they
did in olden Bible times.

CHAPTER V

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE

There is no woman in the world who is so bound
down by custom, so tied to the wheel of conven-
tionality, as is the Indian woman, both Hindu
and Mohammedan. In the olden times the
ancient law-makers realized the danger menacing
a people surrounded by an inferior race, as were
the natives of India compared to their Aryan
invaders, and instituted that remarkable social
system that peculiarly afifects the women of the
country, and is the cause of many of the evils
that has made her life one not to be envied —
caste.

Hindu society is divided into hundreds of
comtnunities consisting of several clans, each
clan having its own peculiar customs and iron-
bound rules. The clans are composed of
families, governed by the family custom, which
in turn must obey the clan custom, and these
must be governed by the rules of the community.
If a person violates the custom, he forfeits all
the privileges which he or his family may have
in the life of the community. His social life is

86 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH ;

entirely cut off from other families and from the
protection of his people. No one of his com-
munity will eat or drink with him, visit his house,
or marry his children. The priest will not serve
him, the barber will not shave him, nor the
washman wash for him. He will be absolutely
alone and friendless in the world, not able to get
employment, even allowed to starve by the mem-
bers of his own family^ who dare not help him,
knowing they themselves would be outcasted. He
may not have the solace of joining another caste,
either lower or higher, because he must live and
die in the caste in which he was bom.

Originally there were only four great castes
in India : the Brahmans, or priestly class, who
held all the intellectual or cultural prerogatives ;
the Kashatriyas, or warrior caste ; the Vaisayas,
or merchant caste ; and the Sudras, or working
class. Below that still are the out castes, who are
almost slaves, and do the lowest menial services.
Manu, the great law-maker, said that the
Brahman issued from the head of Brahma, hence
his intellectual superiority ; the warrior from his
arms, the husbandman from his thighs, and the
Sudras from his feet, thus exactly placing the
man's social position in life.

The laws of caste as explained by Mr. Dutt, a
Hindu writer, are as follows —

Individuals cannot be married who do not
belong to the same caste.

A man may not eat with another not of his
own caste.

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 87

His meals must be cooked by persons either
of his own caste or by Brahmans.

No man of an inferior caste is to touch his
food or the dishes in which they are served, or
even to enter his cook-room.

No water or other liquid contaminated by the
touch of a person of inferior caste can be made
use of— rivers, tanks, and other large sheets of
water being held incapable of defilement.

Articles of dry food, such as rice, wheat, etc.,
do not become impure by passing through the
hands of a person of inferior caste so long as
they remain dry, but cannot be taken if they
become wet or greased.

Certain prohibited articles, such as cow's flesh,
pork, fowls, etc., are not to be eaten.

The ocean and other boundaries of India must
not be crossed.

These rules would not be so oppressive if there
were only the four original gteat castes into which
society was first divided, but now each class is
divided into thousands of sub -divisions, whose
members may not intermarry, nor eat together,
nor even touch the food prepared by those of
another community. Mr. Sidney Low has very
well expressed the difficulties caused by this
very intricate social ruling in his " Vision of
India "-

" To get a loose analogy, we might suppose
that everybody who could claim descent from one
of the old Norman families in England formed
one caste ; that members of the ' learned pro-

88 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

fessions,' who had never soiled themselves with
commerce, were combined in a second ; and that
others consisted exclusively of bankers or money-
lenders, or of pork butchers, costermongers,
bricklayers, and so on ad infinitum.

" Add that a man born in the costermonger
class would remain, or ought to remain, a
member of that connection to the end of
his days, and that he would, bring up his
sons to the same business ; that a green-
grocer ought not to eat food in company
with a poulterer, that a baker might not give his
daughter in marriage to a cheesemonger, and
that neither could have any matrimonial relations
with a bootmaker ; and, further, that none of
these persons could place himself in personal
contact with a clergyman or a solicitor — imagine
all this, and you begin to acquire some faint
notion of the involved tangle in which the entire
Hindu community has managed to get itself
en wound."

Mr. Low quotes from the census report of
Sir H. Risley further to illustrate what the caste
system means in the matrimonial sphere, that
sphere that especially touches the womanhood of
India —

" He imagines the great tribe of the Smiths
throughout Great Britain bound together in a
community, and recognizing as their cardinal
doctrine that a Smith must always marry a Smith,
and could by no possibility marry a Brown, a
Jones, or a Robinson. This seems fairly simple ;

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 89

there would be quite enough Miss Smiths to
go round. But, then, note that the Smith horde
would be broken up into smaller clans, each
fiercely endogamous. Brewing Smiths," Sir H.
Risley asks us to observe, " must not mate with
baking Smiths ; shooting Smiths and hunting
Smiths, temperance Smiths and licensed-vic-
tualler Smiths, Free Trade Smiths and Tariff
Reform Smiths, must seek partners for life in
their own particular section of the Smithian
multitude, The Unionist Smith would not lead
a Home Rule damsel to the altar, nor should
Smith the tailor wed the daughter of a Smith
who sold boots."

In its effect upon women the caste system has
been most deleterious because of the difficulty
of finding husbands within the same caste. It
has led to the making away with undesirable
daughters, which was frequently practised by the
parents before the English Government stepped
in and made female infanticide a crime and
severely punished the culprits. Yet we are told
that the disproportion of female to male children
shows that the practice has not been completely
stamped out, and that many fathers foreseeing the
financial difificulties to be encountered in marry-
ing their daughters, have deliberately made away
with them at birth. In the smaller villages the
crime is difficult of detection, but when the ratio
of girls to boys falls particularly low in a com-
munity, the Government quarters extra police
upon the people, making all the inhabitants con-

90 THE HAKIM AND THE PURDAH

tribute towards the cost of their maintenance,
and the records soon show that girl babies are
again being bom in the villages.

Life in a high-caste Brahman family is much
more complicated than that of the low-caste
family, and many burdens are added to the
already heavy ones borne by the Hindu woman,
because of the rituals and customs woven around
this caste system. A woman told me that she
had a friend who lived in the house of two maiden
aunts who were most orthodox Hindus. This
woman was not allowed to touch a thing in the
morning before her bath. Beside her bed was
a long pole with which she must handle her
towels and clothing, and she was not permitted
to enter the presence of her aunts until her
uncleanliness had been removed by ablutions
and prayers.

The mother-in-law of my friend has practically
no social intercourse with her son's wife because
she has broken caste, eats with Europeans, and
wears shoes made from leather. Her own mother
at first felt her daughter's disgrace keenly, and
would not see her for many years. At last love
triumphed over custom, and now the mother will
visit the daughter if assured that a place will be
made ceremonially clean where she may spread
her mat of holy dharba grass, on which she sits
while chatting. She will receive nothing from
the hand of her daughter, neither water nor food,
and when she returns home she takes a complete
bath and changes her wearing apparel that has

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 91

become polluted by contact with her daughter's
house.

Orthodox Hindus do not like sitting upon a
mat of cloth or walking upon a carpet. In many
houses a wooden bench or board is kept for
visitors. The wife of a Resident in one of the
Indian cities gave a reception to which came
several ladies from the conservative Hindu
families. They carefully avoided walking upon
the rugs, and sat upon the edge of the chairs,
looking most unhappy. The wife of the Resident
asked an advanced Hindu lady why her after-
noon was not a success so far as the Indian guests
were concerned. She was told that the only
thought that possessed these little women was a
desire to get home. They wished to be polite and
stay as long as etiquette demanded, but they
welcomed with avidity the finality of the party
when they might return and bathe and purify
themselves from the close contact of foreigners
and Mohammedans.

The members of the Brahmo Samaj, that pro-
gressive offshoot of Hinduism, have broken caste
and allow their women to go about freely. I was
in a town of Southern India with a member of
this sect, and we called upon the head mistress
of a large school for girls. She was at home
with her newly born baby, waiting for the forty
days of uncleanness to pass before returning to
her school. She was a very intelligent woman,
talking freely of the good and the bad of their
social system. She said that a school for girls

92 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

such as that of which she was the head,
where four hundred young girls were being
educated in modern thought, would have the
greatest influence upon the women of the next
generation, but that it would take time to
eradicate the instincts of generations of ignor-
ance and superstition, so deeply woven into the
very nature of the Indian woman.

At the close of the visit the baby was
brought to me, and rather lacking a subject for
conversation I made the unfortunate remark to
the baby, " You will grow up a good Hindu and
stick to your caste." I was not prepared for
the storm of protest it raised from my friend
who had brought me to the home. She turned
on me furiously and said : " How can you say
such things, you, a modem woman ? Caste is
the ruin of India. If we want progress we must
break caste : it is our only hope."

It is not caste alone that makes the rules
that govern the life and actions of the Indian
woman, but from birth to the burning-ground
every detail of life is cast into a mould of
ceremony and ritual, which in the hands of
a less spiritual people would have degenerated
into mere sham'. Of the sixteen events in
the life of a man, all are viewed from a
religious aspect, and accompanied by a reli-
gious ceremony. The most sacred prayers
are said in the morning before partaking of
food, and it is the husband, the head of the
house, who is supposed to say the prayers for all

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 93

beneath his roof-tree. " No sacrifice is allowed
to women apart from their husbands, no religious
rite, no fasting ; as far as a wife honours her
lord, so far is she exalted in heaven," says the
laws of Manu, yet the instinct of religion is
strong in the Hindu woman, as it is in women all
over the world, and they do perform a worship.
At the time of her marriage, at the marriage of
her children, and at many of the sacred feasts,
the wife must sit with her husband during the
time he is engaged in the performance of the
acts of worship, though she takes no active part
in the ceremonies. If a man has lost his wife,
he cannot perform the sacrifice of fire.

The Hindu woman has her gods, which she
keeps in the kitchen, the most sacred room in a
Hindu household. In all the time I was in
India I never saw the inside of the kitchen of
any of my Indian friends. I have been told
that it is divided into two parts, the smaller
room used for the cooking and as pantry for the
storing of food, and must be kept free from
ceremonial defilement. The larger half of the
kitchen of a middle -class household serves as
dining-room, and in an alcove or in one comer
are the household gods and the utensils to be
used in their worship. None of the images used
by a woman are consecrated, but she lights her
lamp and bows her head and prays for the safety
of her dear ones, then offers a bit of fruit or betel
or a sweetmeat that she has prepared, and
scatters sandal paste and coloured rice or the

94 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

petals of sweet-smelling flowers over her god.
There is generally in each tiny yard or in the
kitchen a tulasi plant, around which the women
walk while chanting a prayer. This plant is
considered the wife of Vishnu, and is revered by
all. There are many blessings promised to one
who attends and waters one of these plants, and
it will keep care and tribulation from its
worshippers and grant pardon to the sinner who
cherishes the tulasi plant. Yet it is more par-
ticularly worshipped by women. At one time,
it is said, women were commanded to walk
around it one hundred and eight times each day,
which certainly was a blessing from a hygienic
point of view, as it gave exercise to these shut-in
women, who are restricted to the four walls of
their homes.

At night when the lamps are liglited the wife
makes obeisance to the flame, saying —

The flame of this lamp is the supreme good.

The flame of this lamp is the abode of the Supreme.

By this flame sin is destroyed,

Oh, Thou light of the evening, we praise thee.

At the time of the evening meal the men have
an elaborate religious ceremony, but the women
say simply, " Govinda, Govinda," a name for
Vishnu, before partaking of their food.

The devout mother teaches her children the
tales of the gods, and at worship time when the
bell is sounded they are taught to place their

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 95

hands together in the attitude of prayer and bow
their little heads to the gods. It is the
father who is expected to teach them the
Vedic texts and the truths to be found in
the Puranas.

The daily worship is held in the homes, but
on feast days or for especial acts of devotion,
such as prayers for the blessings of a son, or
the giving of thanks for favours received, the
women go to the temples. These are crowded
on holy days or days of anniversary of the gods.
No one ever goes to the temple empty-handed,
and one sees the little brass jar of holy water,
the wreath of marigold or sweet -smelling flowers
which are supposed to give pleasure to the
aesthetic senses of the gods. Many women take
a coconut to the temple, which fruit seems to be
generally connected with temple worship. The
breaking of the coconut is said to represent the
slaying of the sacrificial animal, which is only
done now in the temples dedicated to Kali, that
goddess of terror who delights in the blood of
her victims.

While in Benares I visited a temple dedicated
to Shiva, in which were several enormous bulls,
the animal sacred to this god. They were of a
bluish grey in colour, and from long living in
the temple had become as clever as the priests
in looking for offerings from their worshippers.
But while the priests looked for silver or gold,
the bulls had an eagle eye with which to discern
from afar the woman who carried a basket of

96 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

grain. They stood at the back of the temple
and eyed each worshipper as she entered. If
the pious woman had only a brass water -pot in
her hand they did not move ; but if they saw a
basket, they immediately started for her, and
graciously allowed her to pour the grain into
their open mouths, the woman taking care that
she did not pollute the bulls by touching their
lips with her hand. A wreath of marigolds was
then thrown over the neck of the bull, the holy
water was poured on his shoulders, and he
returned to his place. I saw an old lady lovingly
stroke the back of one of these pampered beasts,
ending with the tail, the end of which she used
to stroke her face, and afterwards lovingly kissed
this appendage of her idol. The expression on
her face was one of deepest reverence, and for
her the great blue bull represented the god for
whom her hungry soul was longing. The
educated Hindu would say that she was
struggling to find a god as are we all, but that
she was still a child in matters spiritual and
required a material representative of her ideal.
They say that the real Hindu, the man who has
studied the Vedas and understands the spirit of
his religion, needs no images nor ritual. In his
prayer he plainly shows that to. him God is a
spirit. He says —

Oh, Lord, pardon my three sins. I have in contemplation
clothed Thee in form, who art formless; I have in praise
described Thee, who art ineffable ; and in visiting shrines I
have ignored Thy omnipresence.

y i. —

r"^^A

"^**Ja_-'

A HOLY MAN, BENARES.

To face p. gfi.

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 97

In many of the temples, besides the priests to
minister to the gods, are dancing girls, whose
duties are to dance at the shrines, sing hymns,
and generally delight the gods. They are a
recognized religious institution, and are honoured
next to the priests. They are obtained when
quite young by purchase or by gift. Often in
times of famine a girl is sold to the temple, that
her price may save the rest of the family from
starvation. One is given that all may live. In
other cases a girl is often a thankoffering given
to the gods because of recovery from sickness
or great tribulation. A rich man, instead of
presenting his own daughter, would buy the
daughter of some poor family and present her.
These girls, who have no word to say in regard
to the disposal of their persons, are public women,
and the gains of their profession go towards the
support of the temple. If there should be
children born to these professional dancing girls,
they are brought up in their mother's profession,
very much as were the children born to the
priestesses of Aphrodite in the temples of
Alexandria.

All Indian girls must be married, consequently
these temple women are formally married to a
dagger, a tree, or sqme inanimate object, who,
as a husband, cannot object to the actions of his
wife. Lately, in some places it has been made a
criminal offence to sell a girl or give a daughter
to a temple, and it is only done surreptitiously.
One is told in India that it is a thing of the past.

98 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

yet in one large temple in the South there are
said to be over one hundred dancing girls kept
for the amusement of the blas6 gods.

These dancing girls share with their sisters,
the nautch girls, the only real freedom given to
Indian women. The latter are taught to read
and write, to play musical instruments, and to
make themselves attractive and charming to men.
They come and go freely, mingling with both
men and women. They are found at all feasts
and public ceremonies, and have a very definite
and honourable place in Indian society. What-
ever discredit may be attached to her calling, she
is considered a necessary adjimct to the temple
and the home. Her presence at weddings is
considered most fortunate, and in some castes it
is the nautch girl who fastens the tali around the
neck of the bride, a ceremony similar to placing
the wedding-ring upon the finger. She holds the
centre of the stage at all entertainments given in
honour of guests. While we were in a native
province ruled by a prince who had the reputation
of liking wine, women, and song even more than
did the average ruling prince in India, we were
edified by the dancing of a woman brought from
Bombay at the expense to the prince of nearly
one hundred pounds a day.

The dancing is extremely modest, as the dancer
is fully clothed, and it is the graceful, languorous
poses of her slim body, the waving of her arms
heavily laden with bracelets, and the slow
moving, gliding steps that keep time to the tinkle

INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 99

of the anklets, that charm her admirers. There
is a proverb that says, " Without the jingling
of the nautch girl's anklets, a dwelling-place does
not become pure."

CHAPTER VI

INDIAN HOME LIFE

Although the women are supposed to have no
reHgious standing and are considered unfit to
read the Vedas or touch the consecrated gods,
still their entire life is influenced by religion or
superstition, and the religion and superstition of
the Eastern woman, of whatever land, is so inex-
tricably entwined, that it is hard to tell where
one leaves off and the other begins. Like her
sisters of China and Egypt, she is afraid of the
evil eye. She firmly believes that if her jewels,
her dress, or her children are looked upon with
jealous or covetous eyes, much sorrow will come
to her, and she has many charms and ceremonies
with which to counteract the baneful influence of
spiteful persons. It is never wise for a visitor to
regard a baby too closely or to admire its jewels
or clothing openly, as, even if the mother is one
of the advanced minority, instinct will assert
itself, and deep within her heart, bred there by
centuries of tradition, will be a little feeling that
something might happen to her dear one. Quite
likely, when the unwise caller departs, the mother

100

INDIAN HOME LIFE 101

will make a lamp of kneaded rice flour and fill
it with oil or clarified butter, which, when lighted
and passed round the baby's head, will remove
the dreaded evil.

The 'Hindu woman's life is ruled by omens to
a far greater extent than is the life of the woman
of the Western world. If she is starting on a
visit to a friend, it is a very bad sign for her
to meet a widow, any one carrying a new pot, a
bundle of firewood, a pariah, a lame man, two
men quarrelling, a leper— in fact, there are about
a dozen things she should avoid, or else be under
the necessity of returning to her home and saying
a few prayers before daring to start on her
journey again. If she should sneeze once, it is
most unfortunate, and should be followed by a
second in order to avert the evil, but if the second
sneeze is followed by others, the more the better,
it is a most certain sign that her most ardent
wishes will soon be granted. When one yawns
it is polite to snap the fingers and say, " Govinda,
Govinda," as many believe that the life may
leave the body while yawning, and to avert this
calamity from a baby the mother snaps her
fingers and murmurs, " Krishna, Krishna," in its
tiny ears.

Mohammedan and Hindu customs are so much
alike that it is often hard to say that one is a
Mohammedan custom' or that another is purely
Hindu. At the marriages, and the return of the
daughter to her home to give birth to her first
child, at the birth of the children, and in many

102 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of the social customs of the Mohammedans are
seen the influence of the Hindu religion. It was
the Mohammedans who brought the " purdah "
system, or the seclusion of women, into India.
Before the invasion of these warlike people the
women of India went about freely, but now
the Hindus are practically as secluded as are the
Mohammedan women. In the North, where the
influence of the followers of the Arabian prophet
made itself most dominant, the women are much
more secluded than in the South, where the
Mohammedans did not come in such' large
numbers.

It is in the villages that true India is to be
found, unchanging, languorous India. Here is
a self -centered commonwealth, with little depend-
ence for its welfare upon the outer world, and the
people have remained the same as their fathers
and their father's fathers, impervious to new
innovations and ideas. To look at one of these
villages is very different from ideas one may
have formed of them by reading books of travel.
The first impression received upon entering one
is that of an enlarged barnyard, as cows and
farm implements take entire possession of the
narrow streets. The low, thatched mud houses
are without doors, windows, or chimneys. The
floor is generally plastered with cow dung, which,
when dry, leaves a hard shellac -like polish, con-
sidered by the natives most sanitary. It has to
be redone every two weeks, and to Western eyes
is a most unsightly operation, as it is done with

INDIAN HOME LIFE 103

the hands of the housewife. It is said that when
the Salvation Army sent its first volunteers to
India, they required them to live the life of the
Indian, and that this smearing of the earthen
floors with the national substitute for varnish
was one of the chief causes why women were
not always ready to volunteer for service in the
East.

There is virtually no furniture in the homes.
The stove consists of three or four bricks, around
which the fuel, consisting of dried cakes of mud
and cowdung, are broken, and which smoulder
rather than burn. A few earthenware pots
and a large dish in which to serve the food, some
brass utensils, and a large jar for carrying water,
complete the culinary arrangements. For plates,
banana or plantain leaves are used, or, lacking
these, small leaves are sewn together. This saves
the drudgery of washing dishes, as the leaves
are thrown away after each meal, and the fingers
are used in place of the knives and forks of the
more aesthetic races. Chairs and tables are not
needed, as the Indian squats upon his haunches,
as only an Oriental can ; and in silence, regarding
only his own food, to which he helps himself
from the central dish, he eats his meal. When
the lord of the household has finished, he
graciously allows his wife to eat from the same
leaf. No Indian woman who conforms to the
customs of her race ever eats at the table with
the men of her household, yet this is not confined
to the women of India. The separation of the

104 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

men from the women at the dinner -table is prac-
tised by all Orientals. The women of China and
Japan eat with the younger children when the
master of the house has finished, and no Egyptian
husband, unless one of the small class who have
become thoroughly Westernized, would think of
inviting his wife to share with him his evening
meal.

In the village homes the man shows his
superiority also in the fact that the only bed in
the house of the peasant or workman is that for
the master, if bed it can be called^ — simply a rough
framework of wood with coir ropes strvmg across
it. The extra wardrobe of the family, if they
are so fortunate as to possess more than the one
garment which they wear, is hung on a pole in
a comer of the room, and need not take much
space, as the clothing of India's poor is scant —
a loincloth, a sheet for the shoulders, and a
long piece of cotton for the head suffices him.
His wife will only possess a tight-fitting little
bodice, and six yards of cloth which she will
drape gracefully around her body, making it
serve both as dress and head covering. Yet the
woman's arms are covered often with bracelets,
anklets tinkle as she walks, and as she draws her
sari across her face when passing the stranger,
the glint of a nose -ring is seen, or the light flashes
from a necklace that rests against her brown
skin. This jewellery may be of gold, silver,
brass, or even of glass, but the woman of the
village loves these aids to feminine charms as

INDIAN HOME LIFE 105

well as does her city sister. In tile olden time
the peasant had no trust in banks, and when hfe
accumulated a few extra rupees, he added a
bangle to his wife's arm, or bought a nose or ear-
ring. It served the double purpose of saving
money which might be foolishly spent at the
autumn fair, and also was easy to take to the
moneylender in times of stress. There are many
thousands of pounds of gold that go into India
each year and disappear. The officials say it
is turned into jewellery for these wives and
daughters of India's great middle class, who seem
never too poor to have a touch of gold or silver
upon the persons of their womenfolk.

The village wife is relieved of the necessity of
providing clothing for the children, because until
they are seven .or eight years old an amulet
string or a silver anklet completes their ward-
robe. There are many of these little brown
bodies around every doorway, looking like
dark-skinned cupids. One rarely sees a child
in India with a bad skin, which perhaps is due
to the oil-baths which they receive in early child-
hood. Mothers bathe their babies in oil, then
wash it off with a vegetable soap, leaving the
skin soft and shining as satin. This is a luxury
indulged in by older people also, and the giving
of oils for the bath is a favourite present among
friends.

In the shade of the porch is often seen a cradle,
a very simple affair made of four pieces of wood
with a hammock of cloth held between them.

106 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Around the top of the cloth is arranged baby's
toys so that he may he and amuse himself, which
is quite necessary where the mother has as many
hoxjsehold duties to attend to as tlie Indian
farmer's wife. In places where the woman is
working in the field, the baby may be seen
wrapped in a hammock-like affair and tied to
the limb of a tree ; and it is a common practice
among labouring women, I am told, to give the
babies a drug to keep them, quiet while the
mothers work. Opium is very generally used
in India, especially among the higher classes,
although forbidden by both Hindu and the
Mohammedan religion. It is supposed to in-
vigorate the aged, and an Indian told me that he
thoroughly believed that all men after they pass
the age of fifty were better for the moderate use
of opium.

The wife of the village man or peasant is not
" purdah nashim," or .secluded, as is the wife
of the rich man. She takes her share in thJe
agricultural work, besides carrying water from
the village well, making the cakes of fuel and
plastering them against the side of the house to
dry, grinding the meal, husking the rice, washing
the clothing, and cooking the meals. Yet with
all her work the monotony of her life is broken
by many feasts and ceremonies in which she takes
a part. Each district and temple has its own
particular fete day, and there are many family
feasts where work is given up at the time of
special rejoicing. Relatives and friends meet

INDIAN HOME LIFE 107

together, the houses are decorated, bright saris
are brought forth, and the time is spent in
pleasure and merry-making. There are eighteen
obligatory feasts in the year for the orthodox
Hindu, but only a few of the principal ones are
celebrated.

Many of the ceremonies in' the home originated
in sanitary laws, which would not have been
obeyed unless the people were made to believe
that they were of divine origin. At a certain
time of the year when smallpox is rife, and the
epidemic has passed, there is a worship of the
" Mother," which requires the house to be
thoroughly cleaned and purified, all the old
vessels broken, all old clothing burned or placed
in the sun for a certain time, before the women
are permitted to go to the temple to worship
their favourite goddess. There is another spring
feast, when the women go down to the water
dressed in yellow, and send small lighted lamps
down the stream to the spring goddess. At the
feast of the serpents the villagers take offerings
to the sand-hills, and pour milk and honey into
the holes where the snakes are supposed to dwell,
asking protection of these gods of wisdom, who
especially guard the eyes of their worshippers.
At another feast the women take red water and
sprinkle it upon each other, rejoicing over the
slaying of the giant god of evil. The girls take
part in a pretty feast in the fall, when they
decorate their little brothers with flowers and
garland the houses, and at night light innumer-

108 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

able little lamps, making a village look like a
miniature fairyland.

The village women appear rather sullen, but
when known they are found to be as happy as is
the wife of the average working man. If there
is no drought drying up the crops, if no disease
comes to the cattle, if the moneylender is not
too avaricious, if a few pennies can be saved
to buy bracelets .from the bangle-man at the
annual festival, and if the gods do not disgrace
her by sending too many daug'hters, she is happy.
Yet the village woman and her family are always
but half a step in advance of the waiting wolf ;
famine comes with swiftness, and quick deaths
from plagues to hundreds of thousands of these
peasant people, who constitute nine-tenths of the
population of India.

The life of the women in the small towns and
villages is like life in another world compared to
that led by the women in the large cities of
Calcutta or Bombay or Madras. Here the Indian
lady seems to be trying to lose her national
characteristics, and Indian society is very disap-
pointing to a visitor from the West who wishes
to see something of the life lived by the lady of
India. It seems to be merely a copy of the life
of the English society woman, and her day is
filled with teas, society concerts, and receptions.
Their homes are thoroughly English in every
department, their drawing-rooms are filled with
English bric-k-brac, they go to the entertain-
ments in most luxurious motors j their children,

INDIAN HOME LIFE 109

dressed in European clothes, are brought down
to see the guest by an English governess, and
English is the language of the home. Many of
the Indian women are members of clubs, musical
societies, and are taking active part in the
charities for the benefit of their people.

The Indian woman wields a strong influence
over her husband, and has more of a place in
the life around her than we imagine, from the
stories we hear of unhappy days spent " Behind
Zenana Bars," We are apt to consider the
secluded, shut-in Eastern woman as a cowed,
frightened creature, afraid to say her soul is her
own, while among the better class, at least, it is
quite the contrary. It takes a brave man to go
absolutely against the wishes of his womenfolk,
as they have the advantage of numbers in their
favour. In every great household there are
innumerable women relatives, satellites, and
servants revolving around the personality of the
mistress. These Eastern women have been
schooled in the art of intrigue and understand
thoroughly the efficacy of passive resistance. If
the wife wishes to accomplish a certain object,
and is able to enlist the women of the household
on her side, the man will be compelled sooner or
later to submit to her wishes.

The older, conservative women are very tyran-
nical, and try their best to combat the newer
ideas brought to the zenanas by their sons and
daughters. Many of the younger generation
are trying to break from the patriarchal custom

110 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of all the family living under one roof. They
say it is very fine in theory, and has worked with
good results in the villages, but that it has many
bad points, the chief of which is that it allows
no expression of individuality. The personality
must be sunk in the family. When all the men
will work and become producers and con-
tributors to the family fund, it makes for harmony
in the home, but when some are drones and live
on the toil of others, it makes the burden too
heavy for the few and causes quarrels and
dissensions.

■Women are helpless in India in the earning of
a living for themselves, and if widowhood comes
they must depend for support on some male rela-
tive of their own or of the. family of their
deceased husband. I know a boy of eighteen
who is the only support of his wife, his aunt, a
widow, his widowed mother, and his young sister.
He was compelled to leave school and take a
position in an office in order to take care of all
these women, as he was the responsible head
of the family. It is hard for a boy who is
ambitious and anxious to obtain an education,
when there are many women in his household, as
they care more for the immediate necessities than
for a prospective successful future. They feel
that his father and his father's father were able
to provide for the wants of the family, so why
should the boys of to-day spend years in study-
ing books when they might be adding to the
family exchequer?

INDIAN HOME LIFE 111

It is the women who are compelling the
younger boys and girls to conform to the old
usages and traditions in reg'ard to marriage.
Many a boy leaves school and would like a
chance to find a place for himself in life before
burdening himself with a wife. But this he is
not allowed to do. His mother believes that
all boys should be married early in life, conse-
quently the boy is saddled with a family at about
the age when the American boy is taking his
first shy look at the girl across the aisle in the
schoolroom. These modern young men would
also like to have a voice in the selection of their
wives, but that also is denied them. They must
conform to the traditions of their caste and the
customs of their family. I know a boy who was
compelled to marry his niece, although his educa-
tion had taught him that these intermarriages
were not for the good of his race ; still, he was
helpless, and could not successfully oppose the
combined wishes of the wom'en of his family.

Side by side with these Indian women who
guard jealously the customs and traditions of
other days are the Westernized society women,
who seem to share with their husbands in the
spirit of imitation that has entered into the very
soul of the Indian people who have come into
contact with the English. The Indian gentleman
feels that he must talk " sport," the schoolboy
prides himself upon the knowledge of cricket
and football and talks the jargon of Eton and
Rugby. Because the meat-eating Englishmen

112 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

from cold, dreary England must exercise in order
to live, the Indian also devotes himself to a
strenuous regime that is absolutely alien to his
habits and the requirements of his climate. The
Indian lady, with her exaggerated English accent,
and her costume that is neither of the East nor
of the .West, is a paradox. She may well be
zealous in borrowing what she needs from the
English, but it seems hard for her to assimilate
what she takes and make it a part of herself.
The affectations which she uses to show her
cosmopolitanism are palpably grafted upon her
tree of knowledge, and we who wish to see the
real India are only consoled in the thought that
these unusual conditions which prevail in the
large cities are only the graftings, and that the
tree itself is not affected by them. The real
woman of India is bound to grow in knowledge
brought by education and experience, but deep
down in her heart she will be essentially the same
for years to come. She will not try to exchange
her personality for another's, even in outward
appearance.

The dawn of consciousness that has been pre-
ceded by long twilight is now awakening in the
soul of the Eastern woman, and she will see
by its light that she has a strength and indi-
viduality of her own and that she need not mort-
gage her birthright to borrow alien charms from
the women of other lands.

• CHAPTER VII

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN

There are three great events in a Hindu
woman's life : first, her marriage ; second, the
birth of her son ; and third, if she should be so
unfortunate, her widowhood.

These three events are of immense importance
to all women, but as a woman of the Far East is
supposed to be created for one purpose only,
the rearing of sons to her husband's house,
marriage and birth of children assume a larger
place in her life than in the life of the
Western woman, where these two events are often
merely incidents. Also when a Hindu woman
marries she expects to stay married, as she cannot
divorce her husband, and he can only divorce
her for infidelity. Even death will not open for
her the doorway to remarriage, because if her
husband should die before her, she must remain
true to his memory for life.

The woman's inclinations are seldom consulted
in regard to the choice of a husband, because,
quite likely, when she is not much more than
a child, her parents begin to look around for a

8 ™

114 THE HAKIM AND THE PURDAH

suitable alliance for her. Their choice must fall
upon a man of the same caste, a relative if
possible. The prospective bridegroom may be
a yoimg boy, or he may be an old man, a
widower. The girl must be married. There are
no reasons in the Hindu philosophy which allow
a girl to pass the marriageable age without a
husband being chosen for her. Men may
become " sanyassis," that is, renounce the world
and remain bachelors, but this is not allowed
women under any circumstances, as they must
fulfil their destiny, which is to be the mothers
of men.

If a girl passes the marriageable age, if she
should be twelve or thirteen without being
settled in life, her family would feel that they
were disgraced, and she would have slight oppor-
tunity for marriage in any respectable family.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon her parents to
find for her a husband as soon as possible, which
leads to one of the greatest crimes against Indian
womanhood— child marriages .

There are many preliminaries to be arranged
before the final choice of a bridegroom is decided,
but when he is found at last, the important ques-
tion of the dowry arises. In some places the
father of the bride gives a dowry with his
daughter, in others the groom's father pays a
certain sum to the parents of the little bride,
practically buying her. Nearly every caste has
a different mode of procedure regarding the
exchange of presents and money.

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 115

The girl's personal jewellery and everything
she receives from her future father-in-law, or
that she takes with her to her new home, are
most clearly set down, article by article, in a
document, and constitute her own personal
property, which she may claim if she becomes
a widow.

Marriage is a most ruinous operation finan-
cially for the parents, especially for the father of
the bride. He must give a feast lasting for five
days to all friends and relatives, presents to all
the contracting parties, and great liberality must
be shown the Brahmins and priests who assist in
the ceremony. If his new son-in-law is an
educated youth, he will demand a much larger
dowry with his bride, in these days when
Western education is meaning so much in the life
of the Indian youth. If he is a "failed B.A.,"
he may only demand, we will say, one thousand
rupees from his father-in-law. If he success-
fully passed his examinations and is a full B.A.,
he quite likely would feel that those letters added
to his name were worth at least two thousand
rupees ; and if he should by chance be a Doctor
of Laws, his demands might be limited
only by the knowledge of the amount of
gold the father of his bride has stored for this
emergency.

After the preliminary ceremonies have been
concluded and the family priest has decided upon
the most propitious day for the nuptials, the
family begin to make preparations for the wed-

116 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

ding. Invitations are taken to friends and
relatives who are within visiting distance by the
women of the household, who make upon the
forehead of the invited female guest the round
red caste mark, and leave a small bundle of
pan leaves and betel -nut for the other members of
the family. Often a little sandalwood paste is
touched to the chin and between the shoulders
by the bearer of the invitation. Mohammedan
ladies send a tiny mica box with a cardamom seed
in it and a piece of confectionery, which is given
with the verbal invitation by the messenger, who
must, if possible, be some member of the family
instead of a servant.

In the case of rich people the strong box is
opened and the hoarded rupees brought forth
with which to buy the gold and silver jewellery
for both bride and groom, the elaborate wedding
garments, and the siaris, which are given as
presents to the women guests, and shawls for
the men ; the store-rooms are examined to
make sure that there is rice in plenty, also wheat
flour, butter, oil of sessaman, peas, vegetables,
fruits, pickles, curries, in fact, all the many
foodstuffs necessary in the preparation of
the elaborate feasts which are the main events
of the wedding. Sandalwood powder is bought
in great quantities, antimony for the eyes, incense,
the red paste which wives use on the forehead,
and innumerable numbers of the beautiful flower
wreaths with which the guests are garlanded after
the entertainments. Plenty of new earthen dishes

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 117

are selected from the potters' store, for these
vessels may never be used the second' time.

In the case of the poor man, now is the time
when the visits are made to the moneylender,
because, rich or poor, prince or peasant, there
must be no question of stint at this time of
rejoicing.

A wedding is a very gorgeous affair, being
limited only by the means of the contracting
parties, but it is generally conceded that all
Indians, of whatever class of society they may be
members, spend far too much upon the nuptials
of their children.

Each one of the five days has its especial
religious rite. One ceremony typifies the giving
of the girl by the father to the husband and the
renunciation of his parental authority. On
another day the husband fastens the tali
around his young wife's neck, which is prac-
tically the same as placing the marriage -
ring upon the finger of the new bride. This
tali is a small gold ornament strung on a little
cord composed of one hundred and eight very
fine threads closely twisted together and dyed
yellow with saffron. Before tying the tali it
is taken to the guests, both men and women,
who bless it. Old ladies whose husbands are
alive are specially requested to bless the tali,
in order to insure the couple a long married
life. This symbol of wifehood is tied with three
knots, thus trebly ensuring the marriage tie,
and is never to be removed unless the wearer

118 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

is so unfortunate as to become a widow,
when the cord is cut. The most unkind thing
one woman can say to another is, " May your
tali be cut ! "

After the tying of this emblem the newly
married couple walk three times around a lighted
fire, which is the ultimate binding of the marriage
contract, for there is no more solemn engage-
ment than that which is entered into in the
presence of fire. Rice is thrown over the pair,
and they throw it upon each other, signalling that
they hope to enjoy an abundance of this world's
goods and a fruitful union. Rice is used at
weddings in nearly all Eastern countries as
typifying prosperity and fruitfulness, and it is
perhaps from the Far East that we borrow our
custom of throwing rice upon the newly married
pair.

Many Hindu women wear, in addition to the
tali, an iron bracelet to indicate their mar-
riage state. Among the rich it is gilded and,
consequently, not easily distinguished from the
many bracelets that always cover the Indian
lady's arm.

A young Hindu boy is not supposed to chew
betel -nut nor put flowers in his hair until he is
married. On the fourth day of the marriage
festivities the groom is given his first betel-nut
by his brother-in-law^ and his head is wreathed
with flowers. In a few castes the bride has her
left nostril bored on the fifth day of the marriage
and an ornament placed therein. After marriage

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 119

in some parts of India the woman wears a streak
of red powder in the parting of her hair, and in
practically all provinces she wears the little round
mark of wifehood between the eyes, which, as age
comes, is elongated, until gradually, by the time
that children and grandchildren cluster around
her knee, the little red mark has grown into a
straight line, losing itself in the whitening locks.
In Mysore and in some of the southern provinces
a woman does not tuck up her dress in the back
until she is married. Then an end of the
long sari, which is twisted several times aroimd
the body, is brought from the front to the back
and tucked into a belt, forming a sort of trousers,
and incidentally exposing more brown leg than
we women of the Western world think consistent
with modesty.

At the final feast the bride and groom eat
together from the same leaf to show their com-
plete union. This is the first and last time
that the wife will eat in company with her
husband, if he is an orthodox Hindu and not
imbued with the new Western ideas. Always,
in the future, she will serve him his meal, and
after he has finished she will eat with the other
women of the household and the smaller children,
using the same leaf which has done service for
her lord and master.

When all the religious rites are finished and the
festivities have come to an end, there is a final
procession, when the wife and husband, gor-
geously arrayed in all their jewellery, are carried

120 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

round the town to the accompaniment of music,
the explosion of fire crackers, the shooting of
rockets, and the shouting of friends. Then, if
the bride is still a child, she returns home with
her parents, who keep her secluded until the
time arrives for her to return to her husband's
home and fulfil the duties of a wife. The day
the husband and mother-in-law come to take
the wife to their home is made another time
of rejoicing. She remains with them for a month
when she revisits her old home, and often for the
first few years, or until she has children, she
lives alternately in her husband's house and in
that of her parents. If she finds herself ill-
treated by her husband and tormented by her
mother-in-law, the yotmg girl often seeks her
father's home for shelter and protection, and
remains with them until the husband or his
mother come in person to persuade her to return
home. Nearly always her family add their per-
suasions, if not their force, to compel the wife to
return to her husband's roof, as it is a great
disgrace to all concerned to have a wife leave
her husband. After the children come, the
wife rarely leaves her house and devotes her
time and energies to the rearing of the little
ones that fill all homes, from the mansions of
the rich to the huts of the poor peasants. There
seem to be more little brown bodies in India
than in any place I have visited, unless I except
China, where the staple articles are rice and
babies.

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OP WOMAN 121

The new wife has to accommodate herself to
the customs of her husband's f^nily, and much
of her future happiness depends upon the women
members of the household. If it is a very aristo-
cratic family, she may have all the luxuries of
life, beautiful gold-embroidered saris, jewels,
servants, and slaves, but very little liberty. There
is a saying that you can tell the degree of a
family's aristocracy by the height of the windows
in the home. The higher the rank, the smaller
and higher are the windows and the more
secluded the women. An ordinary lady may
walk in the garden and hear the birds sing and
see the flowers. A higher grade lady may only
look at them from her windows, and if she is a
very great lady indeed, this even is forbidden
her, as the windows are high up near the ceiling,
merely slits in the wall for the lighting and
ventilation of the room.

There are many rules of etiquette prescribed
for the young girl -wife if she would show that
she has been properly trained by her parents.
For example, she must never speak of her
husband by name, nor may she use a word with
the same syllable as her husband's first name.
A friend of mine has a husband whose name
begins with the same syllable as that used in the
word sugar. She always speaks of sugar as " the
substance you put in your tea," and she generally
refers to her husband as " he." Nor would the
man say " my wife," but " my house," or some
word denoting the home. A man in Hyderabad

122 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

met his doctor on the street and said, " I wish
you would come and see me. My house has
a boil on its neck."

This same wife would not sit in the presence
of her mother-in-law or her husband if others
were present. It would show extreme lack of
respect ; nor would she speak if her husband
were in the room. We called upon the wife of
a high official of Bangalore, who came into
the room with her daughter-in-law and her
young daughter, an extremely pretty girl. The
daughter-in-law would not sit down in the
presence of her husband's mother, nor did she
speak, and looked extremely awkward and self-
conscious, as she stood with her sari drawn across
her mouth and watched us with her big black
eyes. The little daughter played the veena, the
national instrument, and as she sat upon the rug,
gorgeously arrayed in an elaborate red and gold
sari, with jewellery on arms, neck, ankles, toes,
and with diamonds in each tiny nostril, she made
a picture never to be forgotten.

In some of the big households where the sons
bring their wives to live beneath the family roof-
tree, the married quarters are not large enough to
allow a separate room for each couple, and the
women sleep in one room and the men in another.
The mother has the right of assigning the couples
who are to inhabit the married quarters for the
week. But even the eagle eye of the mother-in-
law cannot always watch the young people, and
many a girl-wife steals across the courtyard to

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 123

find her husband, who is waiting for her in the
shadows. A crowd of young men in a school
were asked to give their idea of what was the
most beautiful music in the world. One
answered, " The song of the bul-bul," another,
" The plaintive strains of the zither," a third,
" The cry of the night bird," but a young bride-
groom said, " The music of my wife's anklets
as she tries to suppress their sound when she
steals to meet me in the moonlight."

One is amazed at the amount of jewellery worn
by the Indian women, yet this vanity is not con-
fined solely to the women, as in some of the
provinces nearly every man has a jewel in his
ear, and many of them wear most expensive
finger-rings. The women excel iil the artistic
use of jewellery that on other people would seem
tawdry and barbaric, but on these dainty little
women is most becoming to their rich, dark
beauty. Jewellery is not only worn by the lady,
but women of every class are covered with it.
The village woman will have perhaps but one
cotton sari, and her home would be merely a
mud hovel, but she will clink as she walks, and
you know she wears silver anklets, and as she
moves her sari to peep at you, you see the glisten
of a bracelet. It may be of brass or it may be
of silver, or, if she be very poor, coloured glass
bangles will satisfy her cravings for the beautiful,
and her arms will be covered with these orna-
ments from the wrist to the elbow.

At a railway-station near Baroda I saw women

124 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

whose legs to the knee were covered with huge
brass bands that must have beenj most in-
convenient and heavy to carry. In Poona we
stopped to watch a merchant of toe-rings place
his wares upon his patron's toes which were held
out to him for the purpose. The rings were so
tight that soap had to be used to force them
over the twinging toes. The operation was most
painful to vanity, judging from the faces of the
victims, but evidently the sight of the shining ring
as they trudged down the dusty road repaid them
for the suffering they had imdergone. In this
same market were innumerable booths for the
sale of the glass bracelets that are worn by all
the women of India, with the exception of
widows. I watched an old woman in the bangle
bazaar working them over the hands of the
women who sat on the groimd in front of her,
prepared to spend unlimited time in acquiring
these articles of adornment. The purchaser made
her choice from the green or gold or red bangles
piled carelessly upon the trays in front of her,
then the bangle-seller ■. squeezed and manipu-
lated the hand, .slowly working, pushing,
coaxing the bangle over the hand, until finally
it was on the arm, where evidently it would
remain.

My husband and I dined with a Moham-
medan who, after dinner, asked me into the
zenana to meet his wife. The bareness of my
arms shocked her, and she insisted upon pre-
senting me with three bracelets for each arm'.

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 125

working theln on so skilfully that it did not pain
me, but on arriving at the hotel I found I could
not remove them. I tried to persuade the Indian
servant to break them for me, but he was horri-
fied and said it would bring me very bad luck,
as only widows had them broken on the arm.
I feared I would be compelled to wear them
all my life as my husband would not break them,
having overheard the remarks about the widow.
Finally I broke them myself, much to the detri-
ment of my arms, which carried the scars for
many days.

There is an immense amount of money going
into India each year that never gets into circula-
tion, as the gold coins are strung upon chains or
melted to make the bracelets for the women and
children. Life could be made much more com-
fortable for the Indian peasant if he would turn
the money invested in jewellery for his women-
folk into comforts for the home.

The Hindu woman has few legal rights. Any
property which her husband wishes to leave her
must be given to her in his lifetime, as she can-
not inherit his estate, but she may claim main-
tenance from his heirs, and if she should survive
her son, she may become his legal heir. The
male relatives are supposed to provide mainte-
nance for the women of the family.

An outsider looking upon the Hindu home
does not see where real union can possibly exist
between a husband and wife. This is especially
true at the present time, when nearly all the

126 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

better class of India's sons are being educated,
and are reading, listening, touching hands with
the outside world. The women of the middle
and lower classes, except in rare cases, are prac-
tically without education, few being able to read
or write. The signs point to the fact that they
will not long remain in this igmorant state,
because the young men are demanding educated
wives, and a desire for education is abroad in the
land, although axi old proverb says that to
educate a woman is like placing a knife in the
hands of a monkey. The English Government
is establishing schools for girls in every town
and village, and in Baroda enforced schooling is
demanded for girls as well as for boys. But
because of the early marriage of the girl, she has
little opportimity of becoming a real companion
to her husband, as he may continue his studies
for years, while, when she becomes a wife, her
schooldays are over.

I met a gentleman of about fifty years of age
in the South of India who asked me to call upon
his wife, a yoimg girl of seventeen years, who
became his bride at the age of twelve. She
was not at all what the average girl of seventeen
years would be in England or America. She was
the polite hostess, with no trace of self-conscious -
ness or gaucherie, graceful in her every move-
ment. She was exquisitely dressed and covered
with jewels. Large diamond clusters were in her
ears, diamonds in each nostril, and around her
neck a chain of rubies with a large pendant of

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OP WOMAN 127

pearls. Her manners were charming, and as we
were parting she excused herself for a moment
then returned to the room with a small tray on
which was the red powder for the caste mairk,
betel -nut, fruit, and a small bouquet of flowers.
She came to each of us and bowed, then with her
right hand made the mark of wifehood upon our
foreheads, and handed us the betel -nut and
flowers. This gracious and pretty service is one
of the many little kindly acts that are always
performed by the hostess herself, as it would not
be polite to delegate it to a servant.

I was charmed with this dainty little woman,
yet I could not help thinking that she might be
a pretty toy, but not a companion to the man
with whom I had been conversing a few hours
previous, and in whose library I had seen
Emerson's " Essays," Farrar's " Life of Christ,"
" Pilgrim's Progress," the works of Tolstoy,
Epictetus, and lying upon the desk, as if just
left by the master, Maeterlinck's " Life and
Death."

According to the ethical, moral, and religious
standards of the Hindus, man and woman are
equal. The Vedas teach-
Before the creation of this phenomenal world, the first
born Lord of all creatures divided his own self in two halves
so that one half should be male and the other half female.
Just as the halves of fruit possess the same nature, the same
attributes and the same properties in equal proportion, so man
and woman, being the equal halves of the same substance,
possess equal rights, equal privileges, and equal power.

128 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

This sounds very well in print, and learned
Hindus quote us the Vedas to show that in their
country women and men are considered equal.
They are most indignant at the conception by the
Western people of the treatment accorded the
Indian woman by her husband. They say that
books are filled with the stories of the brutality
of husbands who marry these girl -wives without
love on either side, yet they point out that it is a
well-known fact th^-t there are fewer wife -beaters
in India than there are in England. Manu, the
great law -giver, says, " A woman's body must
not be struck hard even with a flower, because it
is sacred."

In the olden time we are told that women
were well versed in the Vedas, although it
is now claimed that they are forbidden to
read them or to be taught their truths. It is
known that two of the famous songs of the
Rig Veda were revealed by women, and
when Sankaracharya, the great commentator of
the Vedanta, was discussing this philosophy
with another savant, a Hindu lady well versed
in the Hindu scriptures was requested to act as
umpire .

Whatever may have been her position in former
times, at present there is no woman on earth who
reveals more true attachment and devotion to
her husband than does the Hindu wife. There is
a beautiful saying, " Man is strength, woman is
beauty ; he is the reason that governs and she
is the wisdom that moderates."

MARRIAGE— THE GOAL OF WOMAN 129

In the Mahrabarata we find this definition of
a woman—

A man's wife is his truest friend ;

A loving wife is a perpetual spring

Of virtue, pleasure, wealth ; a faithful

Wife is his best aid in seeking Heavenly bliss.

A sweetly speaking wife is a companion

In solitude, a father in advice,
A mother in all seasons of distress,
A rest in passing through life's wilderness.

CHAPTER VIII

INDIAN MOTHERHOOD

When it is known that the girl-wife is to fulfil
her destiny by giving her lord a child, she
becomes a person of importance in her home
circle, and there are endless ceremonies to be
observed. Feasts are given friends, and many
days are passed in rejoicing. One of the
earliest celebrations is given the children of
all friends and relatives, when the glass -
bangle man comes with his wares, which
are bought and freely distributed to the
guests. About two months before the baby is
expected the mother takes the daughter to her
home, where she remains until after the formal
purification, which is forty days after the birth
of a girl, and thirty should she be so fortunate
as to give a man-child to the world. At the end
of that time her husband or his mother must
come and take her home again. It would be
an insult to send a lesser person, unless it were
absolutely impossible for either of them to be the
messenger. This custom of the young mother
giving birth to her first child under her own

130

INDIAN MOTHERHOOD 131

family roof -tree is followed by, Mohammedans
as well as by Hindus.

The midwife in the villages is generally the
wife of the barber, and naturally her knowledge
of medicine is very much limited. She is ruled
entirely by superstition and old-time custom.
Her chief knowledge consists in different prayers,
and a woman who is an expert in this field of
obstetrics is always in demand, because there is
no time when prayers are a greater necessity
than at the birth of a child. Both the baby and
its mother are peculiarly susceptible to the evil
eye, to the influences of lucky and unlucky days,
and a thousand other superstitions that make
this time of a woman's life one of great danger.
Happily for Indian women, the Marchioness of
Dufferin, and the wives of other viceroys, have
taken the cause of Indian womanhood to heart,
and have established hospitals for women and
supply nurses for the home. There are nearly
two hundred and fifty hospitals and dispensaries
throughout India, and women doctors with
degrees from the highest institutions in Europe
are giving their life to help the women of
India. These doctors, with their assistants, their
native students, and trained nurses, during the
year 1903 took care of a million and a half of
girls and women . Yet there is a vast opportunity
for the enlarging of the work, as I was told that
there are still a hundred million people who have
no knowledge of the blessings to be obtained
from European medicine and surgery, but who

132 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

depend entirely upon the native doctors and
midwives .

Many hospitals are maintained by missionaries,
who have always been the forerunners in work
to help the helpless, and it will only be a question
of time when the mothers of India will not be
compelled to be sacrificed to the superstition and
ignorance of the women who are the only ones
allowed near them in their time of travail. Even
the most advanced men in India to-day would
hardly allow a man doctor to attend his wife
at the birth of a child. He would rather lose
the life of the wife than so violate the customs of
his class.

When the child is born, the date of the month,
the hour of the day, and the star that is in the
ascendant are carefully noted in order that the
guru, or family priest, may cast the horoscope.
Many of these astrologers are astute humbugs,
and impose upon the credulity of their patrons
to an enormous degree.

The house where a child has been born^ as
well as those who live in it, are considered im-
pure for ten days, unless it is a rented house,
when only the room in which the mother lies is
unclean, and into which no one can enter except
the midwife. The room is kept extremely warm,
and incense is burned in it every day, and leaves
are hung in front of the door to ward off eVi!
spirits. On the eleventh day the linen and
clothing is sent to the washman, and the mother,
taking the child in her arms and with the husband

CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA.

INDIAN MOTHEEHOOD 133

sitting beside her, goes through the ceremony
of purification by the family priest, after which
he purifies the entire household and the rooms.
Still the mother is not supposed to receive her
friends, and must keep apart from the rest of
the family until the thirty or forty days are
passed, when she passes through another puri-
fication ceremony, and then goes to the temple
to offer sacrifice. Even the little baby is con-
sidered impure for twenty days, and must not
be touched unless clothed in silk or woollen.

The new-comer has a succession of ceremonies
to celebrate his arrival into this world of sorrows.
On the twelfth day he is named ; on a later day^
the first bracelets are put upon his arms and
tiny anklets upon his ankles. >When he is six
months old he is given his first food. Five
kinds of syrup are made, and the baby is given
a taste of each one, and rice is put into his mouth .
The father offers sacrifice to the household gods,
the first loin-cloth is tied on the little man, the
women sing, music is played, and feasting is
indulged in by all. Each event is made the
occasion of an elaborate feast, to which friends
and relatives are invited and presents are given
to the guests and to the priests. In fact, the
priests seem to be omnipresent at all occasions in
a Hindu family. A woman whom I was visiting
was complaining of the many ceremonies that
had taken place in her family during the past
year, and she said that she was thoroughly tired
of the worry and expense connected with them.

134 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

I said : " But who benefits by these elaborate
feasts and rituals that give so much trouble and
cause such an outlay in presents and money?"
She said wearily : " Who benefits ? Why, the
priests and the Brahmins. They always reap
their harvest, whether we are born, marry, or
die. If we are wicked, we must ask them to
intercede for us ; if we are good,^ we must ask
them to thank the gods for us ; and if we die,
they must help us across the river of fire. We
can do nothing of ourselves ; they are our task-
masters with ever-open palm."

If the newborn son survives the first two
years — and the mortality of babies is fright-
ful, especially in the cities— he will quite
likely have the opportunity of having the
tonsure made for the first time, and this
event is only rivalled by the entertainment
given when, whether boy or girl, the ears
are pierced by the goldsmith and it is
announced that babyhood is passed. These end-
less feasts would be ruinous to the poor Hindu
were it not for the fact that it is practically the
only time when he entertains his friends. There
is no promiscuous dinner -giving as among the
Western people ; friends are invited only in con-
nection with some religious rite or to inaugurate
a special event in the family.

If a member of one of the higher castes, the
mother who has watched her baby grow from
babyhood into boyhood, looks forward to the
most solemn and important event in his life, the

INDIAN MOTHERHOOD 135

ceremony called " the introduction to knowledge,"
when he is invested with the sacred cord. This
ceremony lasts from four to five days and is
nearly as expensive as a wedding. The father
must provide many pieces of cotton cloth and
small gold and silver coins to be given as presents
to the guests. He must have unlimited food
and a great collection of pottery, because, as at a
marriage feast, the dishes are broken after their
first use.

This cord may be seen on all Brahmins and
on the members of a few of the higher castes,
hanging from the left shoulder to the right hip.
It is composed of three strands of cotton, each
strand formed by nine threads. The cotton with
which it is made must be gathered from the
plant by the hand of a Brahmin, and corded and
spun by persons of the same caste, in order that
it may not be defiled by passing through the
hands of persons who are ceremonially unclean.
For a young boy the cord has only three strands,
but after he is married it is composed of six
strands and may have nine. It is symbolical of
the body, speech, and mind, and when the knots
are tied, means that the man who wears the
thread has gained control over these three organs
that cause all worldly troubles.

At the end of the ceremony the guests accom-
pany the boy, who is elaborately dressed and
seated in an open palanquin, through the streets
to the sound of singing, mUsic, and merry-
making. On his return to his home, he, for the

136 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

first time, performs the sacrifice of fire, show-
ing that he is now a member of his caste and
a twice -born son of India.

If the mother belongs to a poor family, quite
likely her boy will work to earn a few annas
to add to the family exchequer, or if they are
farmers, his days will be passed in the fields
frightening the greedy crows from the ripening
crops or driving away the animals that infest
the fields which are near the jungles. In
Baroda, education is compulsory ; but many a
mother gets around the law by paying the fine
of two rupees a month, and selling her small
boy's labour for five rupees, thus gaining a
livelihood.

England has established free schools in every
town and village, and there is little excuse even
for the boy or girl of poor parents not to have an
education. Even members of the depressed
classes, or, as they are called, the pariahs, have
their schools. The question that is agitating
the minds of the educators is what form of educa-
tion should be given these sons of a people who
have been practically slaves for many centuries.
Many contend that they should have only a
technical education, that the sons of the carpenter
caste should be made better carpenters, and that
they should not be made barristers. A lady said
to me : " Said, my sweeper's son, goes to school,
and after getting an education he naturally feels
himself better than his father, a sweeper, or his
uncle, who is my groom. He cannot affihate

INDIAN MOTHERHOOD 137

himself with a higher caste than that into which
he was born, as they will not accept him, and he
has outgrown his own caste. What is he to do?
He puts on a foreign hat and leaves his home,
and in the next census, drops his name of Said
Faruki and becomes John James Jones, a half-
caste, and the census -taker wonders why there
has been such an increase in half-castes. The
population of half-castes grows from the lower
castes who wish to raise themselves, but it is
kept down in the census returns by the half-
castes who wish to better themselves socially,
and call themselves Portuguese or subjects of
some other dark-skinned race of Europeans."

This question of the education of the Indian
youth is a very serious problem with which those
who have the welfare of India at heart have to
contend. Many a boy when he returns to his
home and his people says : " Why did they edu-
cate me ? " There are few avenues of livelihood
open to the Indian boy, as there is no Army or
Navy or Church in which to enlist so many of
the younger sons as in England or America.
The main prizes are the Government offices, and
failing these, the chief desire of all Indians is to
be a lawyer. There are few places in the Govern-
ment employ now, and the country is flooded with
impecunious barristers .

The Indian feels that he has a real grievance
in the question of the Civil Service examinations.
For the higher positions in this service it is
necessary for the student to go to England and

138 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

obtain his degree at an English university. The
question of expense is a bar to the great majority.
One often hears of parents mortgaging their
homes and practically selling themselves to the
moneylender for life, that the boy may have this
one great opportunity. If he wins, they have
not struggled in vain, but if he fails, life will be
very grey and grim, because quite likely his life
and his son's, and his son's son's life will be given
in a vain attempt to get rid of the burden of debt
which seems to always hang over the heads of
India's poor.

The question of the education of the daughter
is not so much a matter of thought to the middle-
class Mohammedan or Hindu mother, because
at the time when, if she were in Western lands,
she would be taking her books under her arm
and starting for her first day at school, in India
she is getting married. She may, if in a village,
attend the school with her brothers xmtil she
is eight or nine years old, but rarely, except
in the highest classes, does the little girl
have a longer opportunity for study. In the
cities the rich families are sending their daughters
to private schools, and the Oriental home is the
happy hunting ground for the English governess,
who is engaged to teach, not only the knowledge
to be found in books but also the etiquette to
be observed in English society, as it seems to be
the main object in life of the educated Indian,
both man and woman, to be more English in
manner than are the English themselves.

INDIAN MOTHEEHOOD 139

In all the better class homes the piano is seen,
and seldom now does the daughter of the house
play upon the veena or any instrument of Indian
music. In Calcutta I went to a reception given
by a great Indian lady. With the exception of
the costumes worn by the pretty dark-eyed Ben-
galis, and the absence of men, I would have
thought I was in an English house at an after-
noon, tea. English was spoken by nearly every
one, the music was European, the refreshments
were from an English caterer, and there was no
distinct note of India in all the afternoon's cere-
monies. Most of the ladies wore high -heeled
French slippers, and many of them had their
beautifully draped saris twined around bodies
held in place by the French corset, which must
have been most imcomfortable for these people,
used to untrammelled freedom in regard to their
dress.

Times are changing so fast in India that it is
hard to say " This is a custom " or " That is a
custom." Education is opening the eyes of the
younger generation of Indian women to the
fallacy of many of the old-time rites and super-
stitions. Still, many of the mothers are conser-
vative and feel keenly their daughter's departure
from the beliefs of her day, yet the pressure is
so strong that many of these conservative mothers
are sending their daughters to the schools, both
mission and Government, where in the former
they avail themselves eagerly of the education,
but are not influenced by the religious teaching.

140 THE HABIM AND THE PURDAH

One devout Mohammedan mother said to me :
" Yes, I send my daughter to a mission school,
as it is the best in our town. I feel that they
cannot hurt her, as she has had a good religious
training in the home."

A great many of the mothers feel that the
present system of education for women in India
is wrong, and that the text -books are not the
ones that should be adopted for the use of Indian
children. The stories have little to do with
Indian life, and the children do not understand
them. For instance, stories of snowstorms, ice,
and things that are to be seen in a foreign land,
are far above the understanding of the average
Indian girl. It is also said that the girl is taught
of Joan of Arc and of English heroines, but
nothing is said of the heroines of Indian history,
nor is anything taught of Indian history before
the English occupation. There is nothing given
the child to inspire a feeling of patriotism, nor
is she given any moral training except in the
mission schools. She is given a certain amount
of book knowledge, which quite likely she can-
not assimilate, and is considered educated. I
remember visiting a girls' school where the
teacher asked a class of girls to recite Words-
worth's poetry, extracts from Shelley and Keats ;
they could tell the place of birth and give the list
of English poets and chronology of the Eng'lish
kings most glibly, but what actual good it
afforded the Indian girl to have all these interest-
ing facts in her little head I could not see.

INDIAN MOTHERHOOD 141

The Indian girl learns easily and is often
most eloquent. There are no better public
speakers than are the Bengali women, who seem
to share with their men in the alertness of their
brain. A prominent educator of India said :—

I have come in contact with people from all over the world
in my capacity as educator, but I believe there are no men of any
country who can compare with the Indian in quickness of thought
and in capacity to learn. Within the small round head of the
Bengali is a dynamo of resistless energy, that is for ever working,
either for good or bad, but which ever way it turns, we of
England must recognize its power.

The crying need of India is the great teacher,
both man and woman ; the teacher who will
really take an interest in his pupils and not
feel the bar of race. This is the fault of the
average man who comes to India, and if he does
not have it when he arrives he soon acquires a
pride in being one of the ruling race. The Indian
boy and girl are extremely cleveir, and feel in-
stantly this racial prejudice of the Englishman,
and consequently resent his attitude of supe-
riority. Tennyson's indictment of English
schoolmasters could be justly applied to many
of the teachers in India to-day : —

Because you do profess to teach, and teach us nothing,
feeding not the heart.

There are wanted teachers whoi will give the
Indian boy and girl the true value of an education
other than its advantages from an economic

142 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

standpoint. That must be considered also, and
in a land where the crowds are gireat and famines
many, it assumes even a larger importance in
the lives of the boys who taust become the wage-
earners, than it does in Western lands, where life
is not such a fierce struggle for the necessities.
But along with the training for the making of
a livelihood should be given another training.
These boys and girls of India who are just start-
ing on the road that their Occidental brothers and
sisters have been treading for many generations
should be given the broader view of education,
its worth and meaning. They should be taught
by loving teachers the true knowledge of which
so beautiful a definition is given by Bishop
Mant :—

What is true knowledge ! Is it with keen eye

Of Lucre's sons to thread the mazy way ?

Is it of civil rights, and royal sway,
And wealth political, the depths to try?
Is it to delve the earth, to soar the sky?

To marshal nations, tribes in just array;

To mix and analyze, and mete and weigh
Her elements, and all her powers descry?
These things, who will may know them, if to know

Breed not vainglory ; but, o'er all, to scan
God in his works and Word shown forth below.

Creation's wonders and Redemption's plan;
Whence came we, what to do, and whither go :

This is true knowledge, and the whole of man.

CHAPTER IX'

WOMAN'S SORROW

Abbe Du Bois says : " The happiest death for
a woman is that which overtakes her while she
is still in a wedded state . Such a death is looked
upon as a reward of goodness extending back
for many generations ; on the other hand, the
greatest misfortune that can befall a wife is to
survive her husband."

Death is a tragedy in all lands, but with the
Hindus it is made doubly tragical because of
superstition and the endless ritual connected with
their religion. The idea of mourning is not so
much sorrow as it is uncleanness, defilement.

When death seems imminent the family priest
is summoned to administer the last sacrament.
The dying person is lifted from the couch and
laid upon the ground, which has been made cere-
monially pure by, smearing it with cowdung and
by placing the sacred dharba grass upon it. It
is said that if a man dies upon a bed he must
carry it through eternity. It is most important
that a man should breathe his last upon the earth,
and not within the house, as thtere are certain

143

144 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

phases of the moon when it would be a serious
annoyance for all within the house to have a
death beneath the roof. In fact, it pollutes the
whole neighbourhood to have a death in the
vicinity, and the neighbours share in the un-
clean state of the family imtil the corpse is
carried to the burning -ground. Often if a death
occurs in a house in an unpropitious phase of
the moon, the dwelling must be vacated until such
time as the priest shall permit it to be purified ;
sometimes the ban cast upon the place lasts
from three to six months.

The duration of the state of ceremonial im-
purity, varies according to the age of the
deceased. In the case of mere infants the time
is about one day. In the case of a boy who
has not been invested with the sacred cord, or
a girl not married, the time is three days ; and
after that, in either case, the time is ten days.
In the case of a married girl, whether or not
she has gone to live with her husband, her own
people must observe the ceremonial for three
days. During these periods the near relatives
of the dead are unclean and their touch would
defile any person or thing. They must not enter
their own kitchen nor touch any cooking utensil.
The food must be cooked by some one not per-
sonally connected with the dead, but of equal
caste. If for some reason the mourning family
cannot get any one of their own caste to cook
for them, they must procure kitchen utensils and
cook their food in some place other than the

WOMAN'S SOREOW 145

usual kitchen, not using the utensils again. If
a person in mourning went into a kitchen or
storehouse, everything would have to be thrown
away immediately.

The wailing of the women tells the (?tory of
a death, as they abandon themselves completely
to their sorrow, tearing their hair, striking their
foreheads, and uttering shrill cries to show their
desolation. As soon as the breath leaves the
body preparations are made at once for its dis-
posal, as a corpse is never kept longer than
twenty-four hours in this hot climate. The eldest
son, if there is one of suitable age, or the father
or eldest brother in order of nearest relationship,
or the husband if the deceased is a woman, must
conduct the funeral ceremonies. The body is
washed and shaven and adorned with the marks
of his caste, and placed in a sitting position,
with the head uncovered, and the son or heir
performs a sacrifice before it. Then the two
thumbs and the great toes are tied together and
the body is enveloped in a new white cloth and
placed upon a bier, formed of two long poles
with seven cross-pieces. With the heir at the
head, carrying a pot of fire, the procession starts
for the burning -ground. This bier must always
be carried by relatives or members of the same
caste. When a man is ill and it is necessary to
tell him that he will soon depart from this world,
it is broken to him gently by some one saying,
" You will soon ascend a palanquin carried by
bearers of your own caste." On the way to the

10

146 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

cemetery the procession is stopped three times
and the bier placed on the ground, the face un-
covered, and a prayer is said. If, as sometimes
occurs, the person is not really dead and he
revives, it is most unfortunate for all concerned,
the revived man included, as he is considered as
dead and not allowed to return to his home or
to his caste.

Arrival at the burning -ground, where the
funeral pile has been prepared by men whose
profession it is to attend to the dead, and who
are always of the pariah class, the untouchables,
the body is put on the pyre and the sacred thread
and loin cloth are removed with the winding-sheet,
as the body must depart from the world in the
state in which it entered it, completely naked . The
head should be placed towards the south and the
legs towards the north. If near a sacred river,
like the Ganges,, the body is laid for a few
moments with the feet in the sacred water, and
water is sprinkled over it. The heir performs the
sacrifices, and it is he who. sets the pile alight,
while the priests repeat the prayers for the dead.
After the pyre is lighted the family retire to a
distance and leave the body to the administrations
of the men in charge. In some places the heir
is supposed to break the skull so that the gases
may escape and the body may not explode., I was
told of one woman who wished to establish her
right to a rich man's property ; consequently
at the critical moment she dashed from the arms
of her friends and with one blow of a stick

WOMAN'S SORROW 147

broke the head of her late liege lord, thus clearly
showing her heirship, as only the legal heir is
entitled to perform this last kind office for the
dear departed.

I heard one rather peculiar story while in India
in regard to the cremation of the dead. I sat
at dinner beside an English official who had been
many years in the Government service of India.
In the course of the conversation I asked him
what he thought about cremation. He said, with
a smile : " Well, I am perhaps a little preju-
diced in regard to the cremation of the dead.
I had rather a peculiar experiencfe." I settled
back in my chair, hoping' I was to hear one of
the many stories of Indian life which these old
officials have to tell us if they find we are in-
terested in the lives of the people amongst whom
they work. He said : "I had an acquaintance
once, a Scotchman, who died here in India,
and asked in his will that I and another
friend would cremate him, and not allow an
Indian hand to touch him, but that we should
personally attend to all the detaUs. We were
young then in things Indian, and made our first
mistake in buying the wood for the pyre. Un-
fortunately for our friend, the wily wood-
merchant sold us green wood, and for the first
day he only smoked. By the second day the
wood had dried out, and all would have been
well if we had known that the skull of a person
burned should be broken in order to allow the
gases to escape. We did not know this — our

148 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

friend blew up. We spent the remainder of the
second day in gathering his remains and re-
placing them upon the fire. The third day the
work was fully accomplished ; his ashes were
collected and now repose in a beautiful urn in
his family chapel near Edinburgh."

Ceremonies are held and sacrifices are made
for ten days by the toembers of a family in which
there has been a death. If the deceased was
a married man, it is on the tenth day that the
widow is degraded into her state of widowhood.
This rite is called " the cutting of the cord,"
because then the tali, the symbol of wifehood,
is cut, and the woman has no more place in
Hindu society. The relatives and friends come
to the house and deck the poor woman in all
her festive clothing ; jewels are put upon her,
flowers, and sandal-paste. Her friends mourn
with her for a time, then her bright clothing is
removed, her beautiful black hair is cut, and she
must remain for ever close -shaven and clothed in
a garment of white. She may attend no feast, is
permitted to eat only one meal a day, and that
should be prepared by her own hands, may not
partake of meat, and if she is so unfortunate
as to be poor in this world's goods she becomes
the drudge and servant of her husband's family.
She is considered unclean, a thing of ill -omen,
so unlucky that if a man were starting on some
business venture and on leaving his doorway
should by chance meet a widow he would return
to his house and say a few prayers to counteract
his bad luck.

WOMAN'S SORROW 149

When the widow is a child, not yet arrived
at the age of living with her husband, the only
ceremony at the death is the cutting of the tali
cord. The other ceremonies and degradations
are reserved for the time when she arrives at
the full age of wifehood, when the whole cere-
mony is enacted as though the wife had been a
real wife, and the little girl -widow is compelled
to join that great army of women in India, nearly
twenty million strong, of whom a million are
child-widows .

I met a great many widows in India, and even
among the Brahmo-Samaj, which sect is now
trying to break the tyrannical yoke of custom,
I never heard of one who dared to brave public
opinion and remarry. I knew one charming
widow— I think the most beautiful woman I saw
in India — who had practically broken all class
restrictions except this last. It was said that
she had been in love with a man for many years,
and he had repeatedly tried to persuade her to
undergo the censure of her people by marrying
him, but she dared not do it. She was only
thirty years old, but she must remain until the
end of her life a widow, almost an outcast.

In the cities and among the modernized people
of India this state does not hold such sorrow for
women as in the villages and country districts,
where the people have not come into contact with
Western civilization. In these purely Hindu
towns, where all social life is controlled by
custom and the influences of superstition and

150 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

religion, when thfe woman can no longer wear
the red mark of wifehood upon her forehead,
her case is pitiable.

The Indian Government has made laws
legalizing the remarriage of widows, but even
when it has the Government sanction, custom and
tradition are too strong, and practically no woman
will take advantage of it. It would mean not
only lifelong disgrace for her, but also would
reflect so severely upon her relatives and the
members of her caste that they would be involved
in endless disgrace.

There are many homes scattered throughout
India for these helpless women. Pundita
Ramabai has a place near Poona where she
has nearly eight hundred widows in her charge,
and they are a sad sight as they go in squads
of from two to three hundred to their work at
the printing press or at the looms attached to
the mission. Some widows had been' with her
for years, and quite likely will remain for life,
as no one will marry a widow, and they do not
seem to be acquiring a practical education with
which they could earn their living in the world.
The Gaekwar of Baroda is solving the widow
question by educating them as teachers at the
Government expense, only asking that in return
for his care they devote a certain number of
years as school-teachers in his State.

Pundita Ramabai's home for widows is a very
remarkable institution, and well repays one for
a visit. It is a faith mission— that is, its members

WOMAN'S SORROW 151

do not receive a salary, but depend upon dona-
tions for their support. What remains after the
expenses of the establishment have been met is
divided among the workers according to their
needs. They are a very devoted band, with an
orthodox, old-fashioned brand of religion that
holds the wrath of God and the terrors of hell
over these emotional women, whose only outlet
for their emotions is their prayers, and at noon
they are permitted to pray aloud and express
their desires and their states of feeling. One
day we heard a great buzzing, sounding from
the distance like an immense swarm of bees,
and found it was the 1,350 widows, rescued street
women, and children having their noonday
prayer. Some of them worked themselves into
a veritable ecstasy of religious emotion, swaying
their bodies, the tears running down their faces
as they prayed for the forgiveness of their sins,
real or imaginary.

The business manager was more interested in
the practical than the religious aspects of the
mission, and looked at the whole question with
the eye of the man who has to provide for all
these people who give nothing to the common
good. When asked the outcome of it all, he
said he could not see what good was being
accomplished except in the actual saving of the
lives. They could not marry, they could not
support themselves, they were helpless, and would
be a burden on others' shoulders so long as they
lived. He said : " Now look ! There go four

152 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

hundred women who should be married to-
morrow ; but who will marry them ? No Hindu
would dare break his caste by marrying one of
them. It would completely ostracize him from
his community. And again, we would not want
to marry a Christian girl to a Hindu or a
Mohammedan."

I asked : " Are there no Christian boys to
marry them? "

He replied : " There are not enough to go
around, and even a Christian does not marry a
widow."

"Do you ever have any offers? " I asked.

He laughed. " Yes, once in a while some man
takes courage and comes here to find a wife,
but he generally goes away without one. We
seem here rather to go on the principle of getting
rid of the speckled apples first, and if there is
a girl with a hare lip, or only one eye, she is
the one trotted out for inspection. Naturally,
the boy beats a hasty retreat, saying he believes
he does not want to get married to-day."

The lot of the widowed woman in India is
not so pitiable if she has been so fortunate as
to have borne sons. In India, as in all Eastern
countries, filial piety, the respect for parents, is
bred into the very fibre of the man's soul. When
the mother becomes a widow and dons the gown
of white, her son cares for her and cherishes
her all her days. She is still the ruler of his
household, and it would be a most unfilial son,
on whom his world would soon cry shame, if

WOMAN'S SOEROW 153

he did not ask the advice of his mother on
matters of importance, nor heed her warnings
in times of stress. Her whole life is given for
others, as this world is supposed to have no
joys for her except the joy; of service. For
her " this world is but a dream : God alone is
real " ; and her days are passed in caring for
the many lives around her and in prayers and
religious rites that will help her to ^more swiftly
pass the time ere she may join her lost one.
The woman of India who has lost her mate turns
instinctively to the gods for solace, because she
has been taught from childhood that " the
religion of the wife lies in serving her husband:
the religion of the widow lies in serving God."

CHAPTER X

HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN
WOMAN

The city of Hyderabad seems to have been
dropped to the earth from an Oriental dream.
It is the most Eastern city in this most Eastern
land, and you are filled with a sense that it is not
at all real, but especially staged and set for your
amusement, and when you leave, it will all dis-
appear. The gaily painted shops will be pulled
down and put in the property-room, the gold-
smiths who make the bracelets, nose-rings, and
necklaces for the pretty, dark -eyed women within
the zenanas is only waiting for his cue to leave
the stage. The men on the comers with their
great wreaths of white flowers, with their mari-
golds and garlands to be hung about the necks of
friends, or to curtain the doorways at some feast
or wedding, are there only for show, to add
colour to the picture. These women passing by
with saris of purple or crimson, with gleaming
bracelets and tinkling anklets, with kohl-
blackened eyes that stare at you wonderingly
from above the closely drawn- sari, or, what is

A CARRIAGE FOR WOMEN.

To face p. 154.

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 155

more peculiar to visitors from the West, the
women draped in long white cloaks like winding-
sheets, which cover them completely from the
view of the passer by, seem part of the chorus ;
and the sheen of knives and guns and huge silver
chains hanging over the shoulder of the man from
the North, the elephant swaying slowly down the
street, looking with keen, twinklingi eyes at the
people who make way for him, are all a part of
the pantomime, or a mirage caused by the
brilliant sunshine of this Southland.

We are told that Hyderabad is the oldest and
greatest native State in the Indian Empire, and
we have heard from childhood of the magnifi-
cence of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the man who
seemed to outrival Solomon with his palaces, his
jewels, and his wives. His hospitality was given
with Oriental lavishness. Those who were fortu-
nate enough to be his guests at the great Durbar
at Delhi, when King George was proclaimed
Emperor of India, will never forget the gOrgeous-
ness and prodigality of his entertainment. For
sixteen months he had aji army of workmen clear-
ing the ground, making the lawns and flower-
gardens, and erecting the tents that were to
accommodate his guests and the four thousand
people he took with him from Hyderabad. His
women were lodged in an old palace at a distance
from the tents of the guests and were unseen,
viewing the spectacle from afar.

Even those of the immediate circle surround-
ing the Nizam at Hyderabad knew nothing of his

156 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

private life within the zenana, and only conjec-
tures were made in regard to the number of
women within its walls. Gossip says that when
the late Nizam died there was a cartload of
broken glass bracelets (the bangles that are worn
by wives, but that are broken on > their wrists
when they become widows) taken away from
the palace. This fortunate man was credited with
a great many more wives than he actually
possessed. Hyderabad is a feudal country, with
many of the customs that prevailed in France
under the old feudal regime. The Nizam is the
overlord. His feudal princes when possessing
a pretty daughter are always anxious to give her
as wife to the Nizam. He perhaps may accept
her and send her to his women's quarters, never
seeing her again. But her people are satisfied,
as they have the honour of having a daughter in
the Imperial zenana, consequently a friend at
Court, as she will naturally remember her family
when Imperial offices or gifts are being dis-
tributed. She receives a stated income, said to
range from sixty dollars to four hundred dollars
a month, according to her status, number of
children, etc.

The Nizam was planning to give his first ball
while I was in Hyderabad, and every one was on
the qui vive regarding those who should be asked
and those who should not. It is remarkable how
everything seems to revolve around the ruler of
one of these principalities. His Highness is an
absolute autocrat concerning the life and actions

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 157

of his people, and the foreigners seem to have
caught the infection, because in every State we
visited the name of the ruler was on all tongues.
" His Highness thinks so and so," or " His High-
ness does not think so and so," was the ultimate,
final word for everything. His greatness and his
Oriental splendour seem to overpower the people
and make them subservient. Yet it is not from
any personal contact, as few of even the Nizam's
ministers have seen him, and his people never
have that honour, unless at some great Durbar,
where, arrayed in royal magnificence, he permits
them to view him upon his throne, or when, as
he is being swiftly whirled along in his motor,
four shrill blasts from the whistles of the police
notify the populace that their ruler is passing.

A native ruler seems to attract a genuine
admiration and respect from his subjects. He
appeals to their instincts with his display. They
love to hear the glories of his magmificence, to
see his elephants, his guards, and his foreign
motors. He can understand his people and his
people understand him ; and even if the taxes are
oppressive and he grinds the faces of the people
into the dust to get money to squander upon his
favourites and to build great palaces, the peasant
will bear it all and not complain, as he feels it
is ordained, and his Rajah is the child of the
gods and entitled to his very life.

There is no fear in the State of Hyderabad
that the present race of rulers will become extinct.
■When a child is born to the Nizam there is a

158 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

public holiday in the State, the schools are closed,
cannon are fired, and every one is supposed to
rejoice with the happy father. While we were
there the people enjoyed four public holidays
within eight days arising from this fact, and
nine more were expected the following week.

While we were in this State there arose a case
that was causing a gireat deal of comment. The
son of a woman was killed and the murderer
was condemned to death. In this Mohammedan
country the law " a life for a life " prevails, and
the death penalty cannot be revoked unless the
heir of the dead man demands it. In some
Hindu communities, where the saving of life is
a meritorious performance, the village or city
will often raise a certain sum and offer it to the
heir in exchange for the life of the condemned
prisoner. Men, I was told, will sometimes take
the money, but women, especially if it was their
son or husband who was killed, will practically
always demand the life. In this instance the
woman, who was a devout Mohammedan, took
the money and sent it to help her fellow-Moham-
medans in their war with the infidel Italians.
Her religious zeal overcame the instinct for
revenge, so deeply planted within the breast
of all followers of the Arabian prophet.

At tea at the home of a Mohammedan I met
several ladies, who willingly discussed with me
the difference between the social customs of our
Western land and those governing the life of the
woman of the East. I was told that there is

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 159

no society life as we know it, no calling, nor
promiscuous making of new acquaintances. The
social life centres around the three great events
of Indian life— births, weddings, and deaths. If
a wedding occurs in a family, the mother will
send invitations to all the ladies of the same
social standing as herself, and, dressed in their
most gorgeous saris and jewels, they come to the
house, where elaborate refreshments are served
with much gossiping and merry-making. The
guests stay hours or days, according to their
relationship to the family. AlsO' at times of
death they go and offer their condolences to
the bereaved family, and although colours are
much more subdued at the time of sorrow than
at the time of rejoicing, it is often another place
in which to show off new finery. These secluded
women feel like the little girl who stopped to
see a friend on her way to a funeral. She was
dressed in a bright pink sari, and when remon-
strated with on wearing such a gay dress on
such a mournful occasion, said, " Why, how can
I be sure that I will get another chance to
show it."

I said to my hostess in the course of the
conversation : " If I were a Mohammedan or a
Hindu lady and came here to live, would the
ladies whose husbands perhaps had business
associations with my husband come to call upon
me? " She said : " No, not at all. You would
never meet the ladies unless at the time of some
festivity you were invited." I asked the reason

160 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

for this, and they answered, " Custom "—the
word that rules the whole Eastern world. This
lack of exchange of courtesies between new
people is traced in some cases to the attitude of
the husbands, who seem afraid to allow their
wives to make new acquaintances. They must
decide whom the wife shall visit. They must
know that the house visited is strictly secluded,
that the hostess has no advanced ideas, and that
the husband is a man of standing before they
allow their women to make new friends. They
say that it is the desire of protection, not
deprivation of liberty, that causes them to take
such care of their dear ones.

An Englishwoman ten years ago tried to meet
the Indian ladies, and sent sixty invitations for
a tea. Only three of the invited guests put in
an appearance. She persisted, convinced the
husbands that no male eyes would gaze upon
their secluded treasures, and now the original
sixty have come with nearly every high -class
lady in Hyderabad, so that on her reception days
the house is crowded.

There is a club where the Mohammedan and
Hindu ladies meet once a month and play bad-
minton, and eat much cake and gossip. Still,
they are not as yet taking any active interest in
social work, nor in what is going on in the
world outside. Mme. Sarojinni Naidu, the
Indian poetess whose charming poems have been
so well received in England, and who is herself
a social favourite in that country, has been trying

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 161

to interest the ladies of Hyderabad in social
work among women. She has been specially
interested in reviving the old industry of silk-
weaving, and the weavers througtu her efforts
have been encouraged to do their best work.
She has sold thousands of rupees worth of the
beautiful silks to her friends within the zenanas,
but it is rather discouraging work, as it has caused
her to be looked upon with suspicion by many of
the ofificials, who fear that she may be using her
influence with the people for some Socialistic
movement.

While in Hyderabad I saw a great deal of
this wonderfully attractive woman, who looks like
a young girl, but who is the mother of children
nearly as big as herself. She herself is not
" purdah," and she has violated the customs of
her caste by marrying a man of another caste.
She goes to public entertainments and lives the
life of an Englishwoman. I went with her to
see the " sports," that form, of entertainment
which always follow the English wherever they
go. They were held at the race track, and in the
grand stand were the entire foreign comtnunity,
with a mixture of Indian gentlemen. We
watched the riders in the field below, and I must
confess the Indian gentlemen easily carried the
honours. They are wonderful horsemen, and
are most picturesque. I think there is no hand-
somer man in the world than the high-class
Indian gentleman. With his clear brown skin,

his large black eyes, his stately carriage, and

11

162 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

magnificent physique, accentuated by the pugaree
or turban on his head, he is a picture that,
once seen, cannot easily be forgotten. The
average Enghshman looks either too fat or too
thin, does not hold himself well, has generally, if
a resident in the East, a taost unhealthy com-
plexion, and in comparison with his Indian neigh-
bour makes a very poor showing.

Mme. Naidu was the only Indian woman in the
grand stand, and after tea was served, she asked
me if I would like to visit the Indian women.
We went upstairs to an enclosed room, which was
filled with Indian ladies, who could see all that
was going on in the grounds below, but were
protected from view by the carved woodwork
enclosing the room. They came to a side
entrance in their carriages or motors ; a screen
of canvas was made from their carriage to the
entrance so that they could pass immediately
from their carriage to a covered stairway, them-
selves unseen.

There were about twenty ladies^ dressed in
most brilliant colours aiud decked with an
immense amount of jewellery. One woman had
seven piercings in her ears, in four of which were
set small buttons of turquoises, and in the others
great hoops of gold in which were hanging pearls
about the size of a pea. In her right nostril was
a diamond and in her left a ruby. Her arms
were covered with bracelets, and there were five
necklaces of diamonds around her neck. Her
trousers, the ugly trousers of the Mohammedan

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 163

lady, were of bright pink brocade, the tunic was
of white, and over it all was a long veil of light
blue gauze. One would imagine a glaring
clash of colours, but all this riot of colour
blends and makes the right setting for the dark
beauty of these Indian women. They are ex-
tremely pretty, with the colouring of an Italian
or Spaniard from the South ; their big black eyes
are shaded by long silky lashes, their noses are
most delicate, and they have exquisitely shaped
mouths. I do not think that I saw an ugly woman
all the time I was visiting the " purdah " women
of India. Some of them with age become a little
too stout, but their dress disguises the figure if
too well blessed with flesh, and softens harsh
outlines if too thin.

The women in this secluded enclosure seemed
to be enjoying themselves much more than the
conventional Englishwomen below them. There
was a table with a varied assortment of non-
alcholic drinks, and many kinds of cakes and
sweets. Each lady had her silver pan-box,
and made pan for her friends, all chatting
and laughing with the utmost freedom and good-
fellowship. They do not seem to feel it a depriva-
tion at all to be compelled to pass their lives with
women. I am sure they would feel very ill
at ease if they thought that they could be seen
by any man except their husband, brother, or
immediate relative.

I had an example of what instinct will do in
the fear of being seen by some one outside of the

164 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

family circle. Mme. Naidu arid I called upon
a Mohammedan lady who was strictly " purdah."
We were taken into a drawing-room furnished
in European fashion, where the father-in-law
of our hostess was chatting with another gentle-
man. The stranger left immediately, but the
father-in-law remained to talk with me while
Mme. Naidu went in search of the mistress of
the house. She returned soon, and said to the
man, " You must leave," and after his departure
the lady entered. When she sat down she
noticed that one of the blinds of the window was
open, and she drew her sari across her face and
spoke to Mme. Naidu, who went to the window
and closed the blind. Even that did not satisfy
her, and a servant was called, who saw that all
the windows were securely closed and that no
one could possibly look into the room from the
outside. It seemed a useless precaution to me, as
the windows opened on to a garden, and no one
could pass unless some member of the household.
She laughed apologetically and said : "I know
what you think, but I cannot sit here with any
degree of comfort if I think some one, a servant
or one of my husband's guests, might pass by.
It is instinct ; my mother and my mother's
mother were ' purdah ' women, and it is in the
blood."

She asked us to come to her rooms and look
at some new clothing. Her rooms were big and
rather bare, as are most irooms in this hot country,
but the furniture was all European. Bed, dress-

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 165

ing-table, and chairs all looked as if made in
England or France. She had a servant bring
her pan -box. This giving of pan is the first
thing offered to a guest on arrival and the
last thing on going away. Her pan-box was
of silver, about nine inches wide by twelve long.
It had a shallow tray in the top, in whiclh was
kept in tiny compartments the betel-nut and
spices. In the bottom' of the box, covered with
a damp cloth, were the leaves. The hostess takes
a leaf, covers it with a thin layer of lime, and with
a pair of scissors breaks a betel-nut into small
pieces, puts it with half a dozen different spices
into the leaf, folds it up, sticking a clove through
the leaf as a fastener, and hands it to the guest.
The guest removes the clove and places the leaf
in the mouth, where it makes a huge bunch on
the side of the face until it is slowly masticated.
It gives forth a juice which colours the inside
of the mouth and the teeth a dark red, but not
permanently, as it rinses quite easily. The
pan has a spicy taste, and leaves the mouth
feeling deliciously clean, I presume owing to the
lime in it. Many of the great houses have a
servant or slave whose only duty is to make
pan for the inmates of the zenana. One such
servant said she made five hundred a day and
her wrist became quite lame from' time to time
caused by cutting the betel-nut.

Our hostess had a box of clothing put in front
of her on the floor, and she showed us a beautiful
collection of saris of woven gold cloth made in

166 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Benares, long tunics of embroidered chiffon-like
gauze, and trousers of heavy gold and silver
goods, almost like tapestry.

I asked them to tell me the duties of a high-
class lady of Hyderabad. Mme. Naidu laughed
and said —

" About eight o'clock in the morning my lady
yawns, and a slave -girl will say, ' Will not the
Begum rise ? ' and the Begum will slowly get out
of bed and allow her slave to brush her teeth with
powdered charcoal and wash her face and hands.
Then she would sit down upon a mat and have
her hair dressed, while other slaves came in with
articles of dress or of the toilet. Soon the other
women of the household would join her, and
they would chew betel -nut and talk and gossip
until about ten o'clock, when a large tray would
be brought in with breakfast, consisting of rice
and curry and sweets. After breakfast, more
friends or relatives com'e in, and the sewing
women and higher servants, and they all talk
and laugh togiether. In the afternoon the silk
merchants may send their wares or the jewellers
their bracelets and rings and precious stones,
which are brought into the zenana by women.
These shopwomen are great gossips, and tell all
the news from other zenanas— who is engaged
and who married and what presents were given,
etc. The women shop and haggle, and perhaps
buy and perhaps do not, and by the time the
merchants leave it is time to eat again. In the
evening the husband or the sons visit the women's

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 167

quarters and brings the Beglim the news of the
world of men outside, and then it is time to
sleep again."

A great many women— nearly all Indian
women, in fact— attend personally to their house-
holds. For instance, I went with one of my
friends, who belonged to a very rich and powerful
family, to call upon her mother, and found her
and her daughter-in-law sitting in the courtyard
preparing the vegetables for dinner. All ladies
know how to cook, and think it no disgrace to
prepare the dinner with their own hands. If a
guest is to be especially honoured, the mother or
wife will prepare the meal for him. In a Hindu
community, where the food must be cooked by
a person of their own or a higher caste, where
no one of a lower caste is even allowed to look
into the kitchen, it might cause great annoyance
if the women of the household did not know how-
to cook, as even in India the mistress has the
servant question with which to contend from time
to time.

In these old families in Hyderabad there are a
great many people under the one roof. The
patriarchal family life prevails — that is, the sons
bring their wives to their father's home, and a
large house shelters many families. The mother
is the head of the women's quarters and her word
is law. Innumerable servants and poor rela-
tions are ever present, and to our Western eyes
disorder and chaos seem to reign. There are
some old families in this city that keep up the

168 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

state of princes or petty kings. There is one
great lady who is surrounded by a bodyguard of
amazons, women dressed as soldiers, who salute
and present arms with military precision when
her courtyard is entered by a visitor.

We went from the house of our young hostess,
loaded down with pan and fruit, to the home
of a colonel in the Nizam's bodyguard. His
wife is " purdah," but his daughter is allowed
to be seen in public. In the drawing-room was
a man tuning the piano., and Mme. Naidu said to
the daughter, " Your mother cannot come here.
There is a man." The daughter replied: " Oh,
it is all right, he is blind." The mother had
travelled extensively in Europe, Egypt, and
Turkey. While abroad she went about freely
as any European, only becoming the secluded
Indian wife while in her own country. Her
daughter was to be married and she showed me
the clothes for the trousseau. There were about
fifty complete outfits, made of gorgeous Benares
cloth, heavy with gold. This clothing lasts a
lifetime, and is handed down from daughter to
daughter, as styles do not radically change. The
mother told me that the custom of giving so much
clothing is dying out, and money is given instead,
allowing the daughter to buy from time to time,
according to her fancy.

While we were talking the husband came in.
He was dressed in English riding clothes, and
was a very up-to-date man-of-the-world. The
moment he entered, the mother and daughter.

HYDERABAD AND WOMAN 169

who up to this time had been chatting affably
and freely, became silent. They virtually did
not speak a word while he was in the room, but
became at once true Indian women, silent before
that superior being— the man.

CHAPTER XI

MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA

We are often told that Mohammedan women are
not religious, that they leave all devotional exer-
cises for their lords and masters, who are
accountable to Allah for their salvation, and to
whom they must look for permission to enter the
abode of the blessed. It is a fact that the women
followers of the Arabian prophet are not seen in
the mosques, because no Mohammedan woman
appears in a public place where she may come in
contact with the other sex. Mohammed dis-
couraged the worship of women in public by
saying, " The presence of women in the mosques
inspires men with feelings other than those purely
devotional."

Although restricted to the home in which to
say her prayers, the Mohammedan woman is very
religious, and often more narrow and bigoted
than her husband, who has the opportxmity of
broadening his religious views by contact with
those of other faiths. The Mohammedan
rehgion, like those of Western lands, has its

170

■'«4fe>*.-

^BrnVflbati^Slbk''' -*'

MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA 171

divisions and subdivisions, differing from each
other on the subject of ritualism and the different
interpretations of the Koran. The two most
important branches of El Islam are the Shiahs
and the Sunnis. At the death of the prophet,
Abu Bekr was elected to take his place— wrong-
fully, as many believe . They feel that the mantle
of prophethood should have fallen upon the
shoulders of his son-in-law, Ali, who was one of
his first disciples and his cousin. The coterie
who adhered to the election of the caliph instead
of the hereditary descent are called the Sunnis.
All of the Egyptians, the Turks, and many Indians
are followers of this party. Those who think
that Ali was deprived of his just rights are called
the Shiahs ; the Persians, many Arabs, and a
few Indians compose the main body of this
division. Ali was finally made caliph, but was
murdered, the caliphate passing out of his family
instead of descending to his grandsons, Hossain
and Hassan, who rebelled against the ruling
caliph and were killed in battle. They are con-
sidered the great martyrs of the Mohammedan
faith, and their deaths are mourned annually by
the Shiahs.

We were in Hyderabad, the great Mohamme-
dan State of India, at the time of mourning, and
I was fortunate enough to be asked to a
" mourning party," given by the women of one of
the old Mohammedan families. It was most
exceptional, as outsiders are never asked to these
homes during this time of religious emotion.

172 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Even their Sunni friends and their acquaintances
in the Hindu faith, know that intruders are
not looked upon kindly during the days set apart
for sorrow.

We arrived at the home, which was surrounded
by a great wall, in which was a massive wooden
door studded with iron nails. In the olden time
these homes were used as fortresses, and were
made strong enough to repel an invasion by the
enemy. Within an embrasure by the side of
the gate was a man on guard, with a gun beside
him. It is true that the gun was of an obsolete
pattern, that would quite likely do the user more
damage than any one else, if the guard had been
called upon to act, but it looked picturesque.
The guard immediately turned his back when
he saw that the carriage contained ladies, and
our servant went ahead to see that all men-
servants were out of sight before my Moham-
medan friends would enter the courtyard. We
drove into what seemed an immense stable -yard.
Bullocks were standing by the side of great
lumbering carts, horses were in their stalls, and
stable accessories were scattered about in great
disorder. A curtain was raised by a woman-
servant, disclosing a short stone stairway,
ascending which we foomd ourselves in the
women's quarters. It was a courtyard, with
rooms opening upon it from the four
sides. These rooms were more like large
alcoves, being separated from the court only
by arches.

MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA 173

At one end was a large room, where about
sixty ladies were sitting on the floor in front of
a strip of white cloth, that served as table and
tablecloth combined. They were seated on the
three sides of the room, leaving the open space
in the middle for the servants to pass while
serving the food. We left our shoes at the
entrance and were taken to a servant, who poured
water over our hands from a brass ewer, allow-
ing it to fall into a basin in which was some
finely chopped straw to conceal the water. Our
hostess seated us opposite her, and an old servant
dipped from a central bowl of rice a generous
helping for m'e, and then various curries, un-
known to me, were passed. I watched my friend,
and took from the dishes she favoured, mixing
it with the rice upon my plate, ma,king rather a
sticky mess, that was conveyed to my mouth
with difficulty. Eating with the fingers is not
so easy as it may appear to a casual observer,
but evidently practice makes perfect, because all
seemed most adept, using only the thumb and
three fingers of the right hand. No food must
be touched with the left hand, as it is, religiously,
unclean .

After my feet had so thoroughly gone to sleep
that they ceased from paining me, I took the
opportunity of looking around and trying to
become acquainted with my neighbours. The
ladies wore no jewellery, and their dresses were
supposed to be of a subdued hue, yet every
colour of the rainbow was represented except

174 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

red, which is the colour of joy and associated
with festive occasions. The Mohammedan dress
is not so graceful as is the Indian sari. The
women wear a pair of tight trousers, made of
satin, silk, or brocade, coming to the tops of
their embroidered slippers. Over the chest is
a small sleeveless jacket, then a tunic of white
or embroidered gauze, and over all a chiffon -
like drapery which is drawn over the head. All
of these outer draperies were of so diaphanous
a material that they did not disguise the outlines
of the figure.

Down the centre of the strips of cloth which
served as table were great dishes of rice and
sweets, many curries, fruits, and an elaborate
assortment of cakes. Servants were everywhere,
and it was hard for a stranger to distinguish
between some of the servants and their mistresses,
as many of the former were very well dressed
and covered with jewellery. They wore brace-
lets, anklets, nose-rings, ear-rings, and necklaces,
mainly of silver or glass ; but one often saw the
glint of gold upon the neck of a serving-woman,
and found she was the personal slave of some
member of the family.

Slavery exists still in Hyderabad, although in
a modified form. No person of good family
would think of selling a slave, and the slaves
themselves feel the honour of belonging to one
of the old families. In a quarrel with a servant
a slave will draw herself up proudly and say,
" You are only a servant—/ belong to the family."

MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA 175

Both servants and slaves are treated with a
familiarity unknown in the West. They take
part in the conversation, enter the rooms without
knocking— in fact, I don't believe there is such a
thing as a locked door in all India— and talk to
the mistress on terms of equality. While at
dinner a small boy, very prettily dressed, came
to the hostess and snuggled his head against her,
while he stared at the peculiar-looking foreign
woman opposite. I asked if he was her son.
She turned his face up to study it more carefully,
then said, " No ; he is the son of one of my
sister's slaves."

Resisting all the importunities of my hostess
to have my plate refilled with the curry and rice,
we rose and went again to the servants in charge
of the ewer and basin, and our hands were
washed. We then adjourned to a courtyard,
where many of the guests had preceded us.
There appears to be no etiquette in regard to
leaving the table ; when a guest has eaten her
dinner she rises and leaves, not asking to be
excused, nor feeling that it is necessary to wait
for her hostess.

The ladies were sitting on the floor of the
alcoves in groups of six or seven, and pan
boxes were much in evidence. Our hostess went
into the open courtyard and mounted a low,
square table, over which was thrown a rug. We
sat down opposite her and she proceeded to make
pan for us, and we remained there for perhaps
half an hour, waiting for the servants to

176 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

finish their dinner. There were at least fifty
servants and slaves, all running around aimlessly,
doing whatever they found to do at the time,
with what seemed no system nor order governing
their work. The mistress had rather a shrill
voice, and her orders could be heard very dis-
tinctly as she called to some one in another part
of the court. I asked my friend if Indian ladies
generally had such loud voices and commanding
tones, and she laughed and said : " Well, if they
have not to begin with they soon acquire them,
as they must be heard above the confusion always
reigning in one of these great houses, where
there are irmumerable servants, slaves, and
poor relations. It takes a strong-minded
woman, and one with no mean executive ability,
to keep peace and harmony in an Eastern
zenana."

After every one had gossiped to her heart's
content, we went to a large room at the end of
the courtyard, which was fitted up as a chapel.
In front of an altar were three pieces of wo.od
wreathed with flowers to represent the tombs of
Ali, Hossain, and Hassan. Facing the tombs
were ten girls, and the guests grouped themselves
around them on the floor. When we were all
seated they began to chant. One would sing
a line, then the rest would join their voices and
sing four or five lines ; then a short pause, and
the leader would again start the chant. The
listeners were absolutely quiet, and the music
rose and fell in weird, minor strains that sounded

MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA 177

tragic even to ears that could not understand
the words. The whole story of the slaying of
the martyrs was told, and this recital of their
passion play moved the hearers deeply. From
one part of the room I heard a sob, then from
another, and soon there was not a dry eye in the
place. At a certain strain in the music all rose,
preceded by the women carrying the miniature
tombs, and marched slowly into an outer court-
yard, where incense was waved over the flower -
wreathed pieces of wood, after which a return
was made to the room and the chanting com-
menced again. We did not sit down, and the
most dramatic part of the performance began.
All stood and beat their breasts in time with the
music, and, as chorus to the verses, would cry,
'- Hossain, Hassan I Hossain, Hassan ! " The
servants beat their breasts so severely that it
seemed they would seriously hurt themselves, and
it is considered a great mark of piety to severely
chastise themselves at this time, but the ladies
were more conservative and kept time with light
taps .

This continued, with slight intermissions, for
half an hour, some sobbing, others crying quietly.
At the end each one dropped to her knees with
her face towards Mecca, and from outside the
wall the voice of a man from the mosque chanted
a benediction. It was most exquisitely sung,
and added the final touch to a weirdly beautiful
scene— the moon shining down into the court-
yard, the flickering lights before the tiny flower-

12

178 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

wreathed tombs, the dark-faced women in their
pretty gowns, with the tears gUstening on their
eyelashes, kneehng, while the unseen voice cried
softly, " Salaam ! Peace be with you ! There
is no God but God."

CHAPTER XII

BURMAH

Passing from India to Burmah is in many ways
like going from darkness to sunlight, from tears
to gaiety. India is a land of tragedy; Burmah
is a land of comedy. In India you see faces
sad, worried, harassed, and life seems a bitter
struggle for the great masses in their endeavour
to keep the hungry wolf from the door. But
in Burmah you are greeted with smiles, no one
is serious, and no one except the Chinese seem
to be really working. The women in the little
booths within the bazaars, smoking their long
cheroots, gossiping with their neighbours, and
flirting with the youth passing by, give one the
impression that it is not business in which they
are interested, but that they are there for their
amusement and to pass a few hours with their
friends .

The dress also shows the difference in the
temperaments of the people. In India the
women's saris are made of dark reds, dark blues,
and heavy purples. In Burmah the colours are
light and gay ; you rarely see a darkly clad

179

180 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

person. The long piece of silk wound tightly,
around the woman's body is always of light
blue, or pink, or yellow, or else a gay
check composed of all three colours. The loose
cotton or linen jacket is spotlessly white, and
around the neck is thrown carelessly, a piece of
silk or a handkerchief of contrasting colour to
the skirt. The hair, of ebony, blackness, is well
oiled and twisted high upon the head and twined
with flowers. Their toes are tucked into small
heelless slippers, which take a certain amount
of dexterity to keep in place ; but all young girls
learn early, in life to give that flirtatious outward
jerk of the heels which keep the slipper from
falling, and also prevents the folds of the skirt
from opening in front. The city, belle when she
starts forth upon the street has well powdered
her nose and often touched her lips with carmine,
and goes forth boldly to claim the admiration
of all, not like the Indian woman, who is com-
pelled to hide her charms behind the sari.

The man of Burmah also dresses in gaily
coloured silks. He wears a long silk cloth
around his body, tucks it in with a twist in front,
and the remaining portion he allows to hang
in folds or throws jauntily over his shoulder.
He wears a short white cotton jacket, over which
another one of darker cloth is worn for street
wear. The old and wealthy when they are pay-
ing visits of ceremony or going to worship at
the pagoda wear long white coats, closed only
at the neck and reaching to the knee. Men of

BURMESE GIRL.

To face p. i8o.

BURMAH 181

all classes wear flowered silk handkerchiefs
around their heads as turbans, but when age
comes these are exchanged for simple ones of
white muslin.

The women of Burmah have unlimited free-
dom as compared with the women of other
Eastern countries. Unlike the women of India,
China, or Egypt, they, may choose their own
husbands and have a courtship such as we of
the Western world so thoroughly imderstand.
From the time of the first great event in a young
girl's life, the boring of her ears, which
announces to her world that she is no longer
a child but a woman, until her betrothal, the
Burmese girl looks forward to the finding of a
husband as the one aim of her life. Until her
ears are bored she is a child and may run and
play with her brothers upon the village street,
but finally the day arrives when her friends and
relatives bring with them the ear -borer and the
soothsayer, and the frightened girl must pay the
price of gaining maidenhood. Her cries are
drowned by the music and the talk and laughter
that seem so heartless ; but the pain is soon
over, and she herself will make the hole
larger by every means in her power, because
until the hole is large enough to receive the
great round tube, nearly half an inch in diameter,
she does not feel that she is indeed a woman. It
is her initiation into womanhood, it corresponds
to the entrance into the monastery or the tattoo-
ing of his legs of her brother, the sign that he

182 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

is no longer a boy, but may sit with men and
chew betel-nut and discuss affairs of the world
with wondrous wisdom.

After the ear -boring ceremony each man our
maiden sees may be a possible husband, and she
copies the coquettish sway of the hips that is so
effective in her older sister as she walks down the
street witlj mother, aunt, or married friend, who
carefully guards her from all improprieties now
that she has arrived at marriageable age.

When all these arts have had the desired effect
and her roving eye has alighted upon the man
of her choice, the Burmese girl may have her
days of courtship. She can meet her sweet-
heart at pwds, those festive parties that seem
to occur every night in Burmah, at which she
may have a stall for selling tobacco, or long
cheroots, or flowers. This keeping of a stall
is not lowering to a woman's social status, and
numbers of well-to-do women set them up at
all places where crowds are liable to congre-
gate. There may be a reason for this besides
the economic one, as it is said a stall or shop
or booth within the bazaar is the quickest way
of attracting a desirable husband. In the
smaller towns there is scarcely a house where
the women have not arranged a small shop for
sale of betel-nut, coco-nuts, little looking-glasses,
toilet articles, or cotton goods from Manchester.
The profits of this little trade are given as pin-
money to the wife or daughters. The English
say that the Burmese woman is a better business

BUEMAH 183

man than her husband, and that in driving a
sharp bargain her successes are far in advance
of those of her less aggressive husband.

Pagoda feasts offer exceptional opportunities
for lovelorn swains, and many young couples
have found their future happiness when gazing
into Buddha's eyes. Evening-time is courting-
time in all the world, especially in this country,
which is too hot during the day to permit of
any useless expenditure of energy, even by an
ardent lover. They also say that the men of
Burmah are influenced by the proverb that says :
" In the morning women are cross and peevish,
in the middle of the day they are testy and
quarrelsome, but at night they are sweet and
amiable."

If the lover does not expect to meet his sweet-
heart at a festival or a theatrical entertainment,
he waits around until he thinks the old people
have retired for the night, and then with a friend
or two as chaperons he calls upon his adored
one, and finds her with powdered face and pretty
dress awaiting him in the moonlit veranda. There
is little privacy in this courtship, because divisions
between the rooms are often only made of
matting, and mothers in Burmah are proverbial
for the quickness of hearing when it concerns
the courtship of their daughters. There is no
lovemaking as we know it — kissing, and hold-
ing of hands, and embracing — which would be
most shocking to the modest instincts of the
Burmese maiden. Yet love has signs, and finally

184 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

father's and mother's consent is asked, the dowry
fixed, and the astrologer consulted, who will tell
them if a boy born on Monday and a girl on
Wednesday may wed. No matter how ardently
the match is desired by the interested parties,
some unions, judged according to their birth-
days, would be most unlucky. For example : —

Friday's daughter

Didn't oughter
Marry with a Monday's son ;

Should she do it

Both will rue it,
Life's last lap will soon be run.

Each day of the week is guarded by an animal,
and it naturally follows that if a man was born
on a day that was ruled by a serpent and a
woman on a day ruled by a mongoose, the
serpent's deadly enemy, they would surely not
live happily together. But if the parent's con-
sent is given, the combination of birthdays are
lucky, the dowry, is satisfactory to all concerned,
then the propitious day must be found from the
horoscope for the actual wedding to take place.
During June, July, August, and September, the
Buddhist Lent, all marriages are barred to the
strict followers of Buddha, and it would be a
very unregenerate son or daughter who would
shock his old father and mother by daring to
ask to marry during" this time. Marriage is a
very precarious proceeding, because if it takes
place in certain months the couple will be rich,

BURMAH 185

in other months they will always love each other,
while there are unfortunate months that bring
sickness and death to those tempting Hymen at
this time. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all the
obstacles that seem to be placed in the way of
marriage, there are few spinsters in Burmah, and
virtually every man over twenty years of age
has a wife.

The marriage ceremony is a strictly civil
affair, no religious rite entering into the per-
formance. The friends meet at the house of
the bride's parents, where a great feast has been
prepared at the expense of the bridegroom's
father, and the eating and drinking and publicity
of the affair make the marriage as binding as
are any marriages in Burmah. Contrary to all
Eastern usages, the young couple take up their
abode with the bride's parents instead of going
to the home of the groom's people, which is
the custom in India, China, and Japan. If the
home roof is too small to shelter the new family,
they may build a new home for themselves. This
is not an expensive affair, as the houses are
extremely simple. They are practically all of
one story, because of the Burman's aversion to
any one walking over his head. The house is
built on posts, thus raising the floor seven or
eight feet from the ground, which is very de-
sirable in rainy weather. It consists of two or
three rooms and an open balcony, where the
family may sit of an evening or where the
daughter of the house may receive her lover,

186 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and not interrupt the slumbers of father and
mother, who have spread their sleeping-mats
upon the floor of the main living-room.

In the rainy season the cooking is done in
one of the rooms, but in the long, dry months
the yard at the back of the house serves as
kitchen. In the smaller towns the roofs are
thatched with palm-leaves or with grass, but in
the cities the ugly iron roofs are now seen, with
here and there a more pretentious roof of tiling.

Moving is not a laborious process, as there
is little necessary furniture in a Burmese home.
A few rush mats, which serve for beds, some
rugs and blankets for use when nights are cold,
which during the day are rolled up and placed
in an unused corner of the room, a cookinjg-
range, which is simply a square box filled with
earth on which the wood is lighted, some earthen
pots for making curries and the cooking of the
rice, a water-jar, ladles made of the half of a
coco -nut placed on a handle, the huge round
lacquer tray, which serves as table, and the bowls
for the curries and deserts.

With nearly every house there is a small yard,
in which are found flowers if the wife is inclined
to love the beautiful ; but if she is more prac-
tically inclined chickens hold sway within the
small domain, until the evil day arrives for them
when they pass into the curry-pot. The strict
Buddhist does not utilize the eggs, believing that
they hold the germ of life which it would be
sinful to destroy. These Burmese roosters can

BURMAH 187

take the place of clocks, as it is said that they
crow regularly four times a day — at sunrise, noon,
sundown, and at midnight. The story goes that
in the olden time there was a great fire made of
books that contained unlawful teaching. Among
these books were those of a famous astrologer,
and after the fire the cocks came and ate the
ashes, thus taking into their very being the know-
ledge of the stars and the actions of the sun.

If the wife lives in the city, she does not have
the weary task of husking the rice, as it is bought
ready for cooking, nor does she need waste much
thought in planning the menu for the day. The
two meals are practically the same — ^the plain
boiled rice upon the table -tray, around which
sit the household, squatting upon their heels.
No knives or forks are needed, as each takes
upon his plate from the central dish the rice,
pours over it curry, arranges on the top the
vegetables and condiments that he loves, and eats
it with the forks with which Nature has pro-
vided him — his fingers. The food is very good
if too much dried fish, which is a delicacy loved
by Burmans, or garlic has not been incorporated
in the curries. Only water is drunk at meal-
time. If the husband has acquired the habit
of tippling, which has come to Burmah with
other foreign customs, he must go to the shop
where it is sold to indulge in what, to every good
householder, is still a thing of which to be
ashamed.

After meals every one smokes — father, mother,

188 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and children. It is said that baby learns while
at his mother's breast to take the long" cigar
from between her lips and puff it between alter-
nate draughts at Nature's font ; but Burmese
deny this most indignantly, and say that smoking
is forbidden the children until they have learned
to walte. I can quite believe this, because it
would take a strong baby to manage the enor-
mous cheroot smoked by all Burmans, although
they are so mild that they would not affect the
nerves even of a child. The cigar seen in the
homes is from six to eight inches in length and
about an inch in diameter. It is made of the
pith of a plant mixed with chopped tobadco-
leaves, wrapped in the leaf of the teak -tree, the
ends tucked in and tied by a piece of red silk,
where stiff pieces of pith keep the loose tobacco
from the mouth. It splutters and scatters its
fine fire in all directions, and cannot be smoked
by an amateur without danger to himself and
all about him. These are often made within
the home by the wife and daughters, yet they
may be seen in tiny booths at all festivities,
where pretty girls sell them to admiring
swains who are too lazy to roll them for
themselves .

Chewing betel-nut is also indulged in by both
man and wife, and the stain it leaves upon the
lips and tongue is not an addition to the beauty
of the mouth ; yet it can be easily cleansed,
as witness the pretty teeth and rosy lips of the
women one meets in the street. There is ng

BURMAH 189

furniture to dust, few dishes to wash, and little
clothing to be sewn, and small care expended
upon the children. Their daily bath consists in
throwing a few buckets of water over their naked
bodies, which they learn early to do for them-
selves, and often around a village well the tiny
babies, dressed in only an amulet string, may
be seen with coco -nut ladle throwing the cooling
water over their bodies and shrieking with
delight. The children of the poor go naked
until about eight or nine years old, and., those
of the better class dress practically as do their
fathers and mothers while in the street, although,
even in houses of the rich, clothing is considered
a useless luxujry for the young.

The simple life leaves much time for the wife,
which she employs in gossiping with friends, in
attending pagoda festivals and pw6s until that
happy event arrives, the birth of the first child.
From the moment it is known that the wife is
to become a mother she is the recipient of much
care and attention and presents from her family
and from her friends, and when she can say,
" I am the mother of a son," then, like all
Oriental women, she has attained the great crown
of womanhood. But because of the lack of
medical skill in Burmah she has to face a most
dreadful ordeal. As soon as her child is born
the mother is rubbed all over with saffron, a
fire lighted near her, and all the blankets that
can be begged or borrowed are heaped upon
her. She is given a drink prepared by the mid-

190 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

wife for the purpose of making her perspire.
This is given her many times a day,, and together
with the large bricks that are heated and wrapped
in damp cloths and placed in her bed conspire
to have the desired effect, and the poor mother
passes seven days in a Turkish bath. Then on
the seventh day, as a finish to this trying ordeal
which she has undergone, she is forced to go
through a most elaborate steaming process, and
if this does not smother her completely, she is
pronounced well . The midwife receives her mats,
her allotment of rice and her shilling, and the
woman returns to her household duties. In the
larger towns now the Burmese woman may call
in the European-trained doctor, and there are
hospitals which answer the great need that the
women have for proper care at this critical time
of their lives. Yet I am told that the mortality
at child-bearing is not so great as that in India
and other Eastern countries. The main effect
upon the woman is to age her greatly ; at the
birth of her first child she changes from the
pretty girl -wife to the middle-aged woman.

About two weeks after the birth of the child
a great feast is given to celebrate the naming
of the new arrival, and on this day also the youn^
man's head is washed for the first time. All
the friends of the family and the neighbours are
invited, and they come, bringing presents with
them to help pay for the feast. The mothfer
sits down with her child in her arms, then some
elder or relation of the parents suggests the name,

BURMAH 191

and everybody accepts it at once, whereupon all
adjourn to the feast, where they eat, chew betel,
and smoke cheroots until nightfall. If the
people have sufficient means, there is a pw^,
which lasts until morning.

It is a rule amongst families that a child's
name must begin with one of the letters belong-
ing to the day on which it was bom, and they
all believe that the stars which were in evidence
at the hour of birth decide a man's character.
A man bom on Monday will be jealous, on Tues-
day honest, on Wednesday bad-tempered, on
Thursday quiet, on Friday garrulous, on Satur-
day quarrelsome, and on Sunday stingy. Each
day also has a particular animal which repre-
sents it. Monday is represented by a tiger,
Tuesday, a lion, etc., and in temples one sees
yellow and wax candles made in the form of
these animals, representing his birthday, placed
before the god by the man who wishes special
benefits from lord Buddha.

Swinging by a couple of ropes from the roof
is a rude home-made basket, which is used for
baby's cradle. Even this useful article of furni-
ture in which the Burmese baby passes his
sleeping hours is subject to the actions of
belligerent spirits, and must be hung in such a
manner as not to tempt the nats to use it for a
resting-place. Burmese mothers, like mothers
all over the world, croon lullabies to their babies
as they swing them back and forth while wait-
ing for the sand-man to come. I give a verse

192 THE HAKIM AND THE PURDAH

of onte of the popular lullabies known generally
to all babies in Burmah —

Nasty, naughty, noisy baby.

If the cat won't, nats will maybe

Come and pinch and punch and rend you —

If they do I won't defend you.

Oh, now please.

Do not tease,

Do be good,

As babies should.
Just one tiny little while ;
Try to sleep, or try to smile.

■When the son is eight or nine years of age
he goes as a matter of course to the monastery
school, which is open to all alike, the poor and
rich, and which is practically the only thing that
the priests, which flood this country, afford the
people in return for the food which is placed
in their begging -bowls each day. Every
Buddhist boy is taught to read and write, and
he learns many of the formulas connected with
the tenets of his religion and the stories relating
to the existence and teachings of Buddha. Until
the English came, all little boys went to the
monastery schools, but now there are Government
schools and Burmese laymen schools and many
private schools, to which the more advanced
Burmans are sending their sons ; yet the school-
rooms in ^e monasteries are not vacant. The
young Burmese are not so forced by the economic
conditions to acquire the foreign education as
is the Indian boy, where life is much more diffi-

BURMAH 193

cult and the Government certificate simply a
means to an end — Government employment.
Until lately it was not thought necessary to
educate the girls. To be pretty, to know how
to take care of her household, to smile
sweetly, and be of a gay disposition were
sufficient for a woman ; and as book knowledge
would not help her in those accomplishments,
book knowledge was, therefore, dispensed with.
But now the larger towns provide educational
facilities for girls, and in Rangoon and Mandalay
there are many private schools for the daughters
of the better class.

Until a Buddhist has entered the monastery,
joining the noble order of the yellow robe, if
for no longer than a day, he is nothing more
than a mere animal . He has a name given
him for worldly purposes, so has a dog, a horse,
or a cow ; but until he has shown himself ready
to leave the world by retiring into the quiet and
peace of the monasteries, he cannot expect to
reap the good that he has sown in the past
life, nor would it be possible for him to look
forward to a happy future. At the beginning
of the Buddhist Lent, all Buddhist boys from the
age of twelve to fifteen don the yellow robe
and carry the begging-bowl before the priest
on his daily rounds. On this most important
day in his life his parents give a feast, where
the young novice, dressed in finest clothes, loaded
with all the family jewels, goes slowly through
the village, preceded bv a band of music and

13

194 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

his friends and relatives dressed in their gayest
clothing. He calls at the houses of his friends
and pays respects to the officials of his village.
Returning to his home, he findSj seated upon a
raised dais, several priests from the monastery
to which he is soon to retire. They hold before
their faces the large lotus -leaf ed-shaped fans, so
as not to see the row of pretty women, dressed!
in their pinks and blues and yellows, flowers
in their hair, jewels and chains on necks, and
bracelets on arms, and pearl powder softening
smiling faces. The solemnity of the ceremony
commences when the boy throws off his fine
clothing, and, binding a piece of white cloth
around his loins, sits down before the barber
ai;d permits that glory of his boyhood, his long
black hair, to be cut off close to his head. After
he has been carefully shaved, water is poured
over his body, and, dressed again in his bright
clothing, he prostrates himself three times before
the monks, begging in Pali, which quite likely
he does not understand, that he may be admitted
to the holy assembly. Then the yellow garments
are given him, the begging-bowl is hung around
his neck, and he is formally a member of the
monastery. With the departure of the priests
and the novice feasting begins, which, accord-
ing to many Burmese festivities, lasts until dawn.
In many cases, if the boy is working and his
services are needed, he remains in the monastery
only long enough to enable him to go once
around the village begging from door to door in

BURMAH 195

the train of the priests. Some stay seven days,
some a fortnight, and others, if they are able,
remain throughout the four months of Lent. Of
course many of them enter the monastery for
life, and there is no country in the world where
there are so many priests as in Burmah. The
monasteries offer a refuge for men in trouble,
for those who desire to leave the cares of the
world and lead a life of meditation and repose.
And it is said that this departure from the world
is made by many a man in this country, where
women are noted for the strength of their
characters and the length of their tongues.

The Burmese boy does not consider he has
attained manhood until he has been tattooed.
When I was first in Burmah, being rather near-
sighted, I thought all Burmese men of the lower
class wore short, dark, skin-tight drawers, but
when- I became more courageous and examined
them more closely I found what I considered
underclothing was the man's own skin. This
had been tattooed from the waistline down to
the kneecap with a series of pictures so closely
set together that they could not be distinguished
one from the other, and melted into a back-
ground of blue and black, with here and there
a softened red to accentuate the fading colours
of the darker dye. This is a sign of manhood,
which, the Burmese say, will probably not die
out, because a Burman would be as ashamed to
have a spotless white skin without a mark of
the tattooer's needle as would the American boy

196 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

to find no manly hairs upon his chin at the age
when other boys begin to shave. And woe to
the hapless youth if a wind-blown paso should
show the girl he was courting a white and
spotless leg ; she wou,ld tell him that his place
was in the women's quarters and oflfer him a
woman's dress ! Each figure in this mosaic has
a meaning, and there are charmis for protection
of the body, for the gaining of a loved one, thus
assuring the wearer great riches, and, mixed with
these, are figures of all kinds — lizards, birds,
and pictures of the Buddha. Sometimes women
who wish to ensnare the object of their affec-
tion endure the pain of having a love charm
tattooed upon the tongue or upon the lips . Often
a few round spots tattooed with the prescribed
formula repeated over it and placed between the
eyes will be enough to bring back a wandering
lover to her side. If this is not effectual or
if the maiden sees herself drifting towards a
lonely middle age with no lover in her view, she
cuts off the locks of hair hanging over her ears,
announcing to all the world that she is looking
for a lover. They say in Rangoon that if a
woman is tattooed it means that she desires an
Englishman for her husband.

In olden days Burmah shared with Japan in
the number of its women given in marriage d
la mode to men of alien races. Nearly every
English official and merchant had his house pre-
sided over by a little native maiden. These
arrangements were very happy and tragedies did

BURMESE BOY WITH TATTOOED LEGS.

To face p. 196,

BURMAH 197

not occur until the Englishman, longing for
home sights and soupds, and the dignity of an
English wife, went back home and returned to
his station with the woman of his choice. Then
there was sorrow, and even the English gold
could not repay the little Burmese woman for
the loss of the love of the kindly, careless man
who had been her master for the many years.
Often attempts were made to regain that master's
love, and many a time the attempts succeeded,
because in the formality and dignity of his
English home and the coldness of his English
wife, the man remembered the happy days and
nights spent under the Burmese roof and the
pretty little Burmese girl who shyly slipped her
hand in his and called him master, lord of all
her days and nights.

There is a story told of an English official in
Upper Burmah who, when time for leave of
absence came, closed up his Burmese home,
giving to its little hostess money sufficient to
make her rich for life . On his return to Burmah
he brought with him the girl from Devonshire
to whom he had been betrothed for many years.
At dinner their first night soft steps were heard
upon the verandas, and curtains moved as if
in the swaying of an evening breeze, but nothing
could be seen. The next morning when start-
ing for his office the frightened horse shied madly
at a little mound of silk lying by the side of
the gateway. It was the little Burmese wife,
with a dagger through her heart. Pinned upon

198 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

her pretty dress was a letter for her lord, in
which she said : " I have looked upon thy
newly wedded wife and found her good. If I
had seen within her eyes — and love would quick
have told me — that she were not the worthy one,
that she were not fitted to be thy mate through
all these years to come, I would have plunged
my knife deep in her heart, but now I know
it is better for me to go, as life without thee
has no joy."

One can understand the charm that these
happy, smiling, care -free little women have for
the men who come from homes where levity
and laissez-faire axe things to be condemned.
The Burmese wife makes no demands upon her
lord and master ; she is obedient, attendant to
his every want, and never scolding and discon-
tented. As far as material wants are concerned,
the native woman of any Eastern country makes
an ideal wife for the average European, yet they
can never be real companions one with the other.
There is more than the bar of language between
them ; there is the bar of instincts, customs, and
traditions. The entire life of each has been
passed in different environments. Practically
always the woman has little or no education,
and knows nothing of the world outside the town
where she was born. There is never any ques-
tion of equality between the foreign husband and
the native wife ; he is always her lord, she is
always his slave. To the light-hearted Burmese
woman, to whom the marriage tie even with a

■^

BURMAH 199

man of her own race is not a binding cord,
these " marriages for a day " are not always
things of tragedy, but the curse falls heavily
upon the child if there should be one. In all
Eastern countries — Egypt, India, Burmah, China,
and Japan— the half-caste is a being set apart.
Ostracized by the members of his father's race,
unrecognized by his mother's people, he is a
social pariah, and one almost feels that, if society
could enforce it, he would be compelled to call
out, " Unclean, unclean I " as did the lepers in
the olden time.

CHAPTER XIII

BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION

Judging from appearances, the Burmese woman
is deeply religious. We see her offering her
flowers before the many shrines scattered
throughout the country, and hear the deep -toned
bell hanging before the lord of light as she strikes
it three times to call the attention of the spirits
of the air to her piety. On days of festival the
pagoda is thronged with gaily dressed women,
and at the greatest of all pagoda feasts, that
of the Shwe Dagon in Rangoon, women pilgrims
from every part of Burmah come to lay their
tribute before the greatest shrine in Buddha-
land. They come by train and boat and bullock-
cart, and to many it is the most important event
of the whole year. Girls look forward to the
chance it offers to show their charms to the male
world, old ladies count on the meeting of friends
and the discussion of the events of the past
year, while to all it offers a chance to lay up
merit for themselves and advance a step on the
long road that leads to Neban.

Near the temple are marionette shows, and

200

BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 201

theatrical companies make these festivals their
place of greatest profit, while the merchants offer
their wares for sale, and the sellers of incense,
candles, flowers, and offerings for the different
shrines reap their harvest. Yet over the whole
joyous occasion, which would strike the casual
observer as simply a holiday for these happy
people, is thrown the veil of a deep religious
motive. In the fascination of the secular gaieties
around them, these spiritual women do not forget
the real object of their pilgrimage, and the
prayers and protestations before the altars, and
the constant booming of the deep-toned bells,
show that praise of the Lord of lords is not for-
gotten amidst the excitement and pleasures of
the world outside.

The Burmese woman may go to the pagoda
on the duty days of each month, of which there
are four, or she may stay at home. The only
force upon her is that of public opinion, yet she
generally goes, as it is the meeting-place of all
her world, and the care-free Burmese, both men
and women, are always looking for a chance of
amusement and a meeting with friends.

Whether or not she attends these duty days
once a week is solely dependent upon her piety,
or her love of companionship ; but deeply in-
grained within her soul is a daily duty that no
Burman, unless of the very advanced class,
neglects — the propitiation of the nats, those spirits
inhabiting the air, the ground, the water, and all
things, both animate and inanimate. Even the

202 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

stones upon the roadside may be the home of
spirits who may prove destructive or hostile at
any time. To guard against the evils that might
come with neglect of such powerful enemies to
his happiness, the Burmese erects a shrine at
the extreinity of his village, sometimes no larger
than a bird house built in the pipul-tree. There
he may offer food, and light his tiny lamps, and
pour his offerings of water, and burn his incense.
He leaves the nats of the household to the
especial care of his wife, who covers all the
posts within the rooms with white cloth, so that
they may be comfortable while sitting in their
favourite places. To counteract the effect of the
evil spirits who may wish to take up their dwell-
ing within the home, the careful housewife keeps
near at hand a jar of water that has been blessed,
and daily sprinkles floor and roof for the protec-
tion of her family. It is believed that people
who have been executed for their crimes or who
have met a violent death become nats and haunt
the place where they so suddenly departed from
this world, and this belief led to many cruel
practices in former times. The burial of men
and women alive under the gates of a city origin-
ated in this desire to protect its inhabitants, as
these spirits wander around the place of their
death, and bring disaster upon strangers who
may come with evil intent. It is said that under
the palace gates fifty men and women were buried
alive to protect those within the Imperial resi-
dence .

BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 203

This belief in spirits leads to many evils, and
the woman's life is one of constant fear for
herself and for her loved ones. She naturally
consults in time of trouble with those who have
a knowledge of spirit lore, or who have power to
control them and make of no avail their wrong
intentions. Consequently Burmah abounds in
astrologers, necromancers, wizards, and witch-
doctors, who impose upon the fears of the women
to a marvellous extent. These charlatans vie
with the doctors in their ignorance.

A man of medicine in this land ruled by super-
stition needs no diploma, and he administers a
mixture of herbs and nasty tasting condiments
in such strong doses that they are bound to cure
or kill. Quantity, not quality, is what the sick
Burmese requires ; and if after a medicine is
administered five times she is not better, another
kind is tried, and if the desired effect is not pro-
duced, another doctor is called, who perhaps
makes a distinctly different diagnosis of the case,
and the dosing is commenced all over again with
another set of medicines. It is well known by
all that the body is composed of four elements-
earth, water, fire, and air— and derangement of
these four properties may cause the illness.
Before medicine is administered, the horoscope
must be consulted in order to learn the propor-
tions of the elements within the body, when per-
haps it is found that the sickness is caused by an
evil act committed in a former life, or the seasons
may be the cause of her misfortune. It is always

204 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

a most complicated affair, and perhaps the doctor
finds that the sufferer must refuse all food whose
initial letter begins with the same letter as that
of the day of her birth. There are ninety-six
diseases that afflict mankind, and it often takes
many doctors and much medicine to decide with
which one of the ninety-six ailments the woman
is contending.

If she should die, it is believed that the soul,
in the shape of a black butterfly, issues from the
mouth, and dies at the same time as that of the
body which it inhabited. Although the Buddhists
do not believe in the actuality of the soul as we
know it, this black butterfly is the real spirit of
the woman, and is with her constantly except at
times of sleep, when it may leave the earthly
body and go roaming over the world. .It can
never visit places strange to its owner, as it might
lose its way and not come back again, when both
would die— the body because its spirit was gone,
the butterfly because it had lost its earthly home.
One reason why a Burman will not rouse one
suddenly from a deep slumber is because he is
afraid that the butterfly might be on a visit and
unable to return to its home upon the man's
awakening, which, of course, would be most fatal.
This roaming spirit takes many chances, as there
are goblins and evil genii who desire nothing
better than to eat black butterflies, and often they
become so frightened that they return home in a
great panic, which throws the owner of the soul
into a fever. It sometimes happens that the

BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 205

spirit is kept prisoner, and then the witch doctors
are brought in and many incantations are gone
through to induce the evil gnomes to release
their hold upon the poor butterfly before it is too
late.

Two souls who deeply love each other often
wish to leave the world together, or a mother
dies and wishes her loved one, perhaps her only
child, to join her in the other land, and her spirit
calls for her baby's butterfly, who will follow
that of the mother unless frustrated by the
machinations of some wise woman who under-
stands the way of spirits. This woman comes
to the house, and placing a mirror on the floor
by the dead mother or wife who is calling for her
child or husband, entreats the dead not to demand
the soul of the living. As she pleads with her
she allows a piece of down to slip slowly on to
the face of the mirror and catches it in a hand-
kerchief, which is then gently placed on the
breast of the living, and the spirit comes back to
its resting-place.

Superstition dominates the life of the Burmese
woman as much as it does her Indian sister.
She believes in love potions and philtres to bring
a longed-for lover to her side. She consults with
wise men, who tell her whether the waning love
of husband is caused by the nat or guardian of
the house ; or if she is not yet wedded, she finds
that the horoscopes of herself and lover are not
propitious and that he is not intended for her
mate. She also uses this man of science to

206 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

revenge herself upon a hated rival, and will cause
an image to be made of clay, over which are
chanted devilish rituals which will cause death or
madness to fall upon the unsuspecting person.

Not only do the spirits of all worlds influence
her, but each act of the things around her has
its meaning. If a hen should lay an egg upon a
cloth, the lucky owner will receive a present ; and
if she is going on a journey and a snake should
cross her path, her misfortune would be certain.
If a dog should carry a bone into the house, she
blesses him, as great riches and honour will come
to all beneath her roof. But she is hampered in
her actions by the number of lucky and unlucky
days that control her destiny. There are days
unfortunate for all the world, and others that
apply only to her, when she must act with ex-
ceeding care, and understand the lore of the
stars which were in the ascendant at her birth.
Thursday is generally a good day for all, but if
a woman was so foolhardy as to comtnence a
work on Tuesday it might be fatal and she would
lose her life . Friday is the day of days on which
to comrnence a new enterprise, as success is
bound to follow. The hair should be washed
once a month, if possible, but never on Monday,
Friday, or Saturday. A good mother on sending
her son into the monastery would see that the
rite of cutting the hair did not fall upon Monday,
Friday, or his birthday, and it limits the choice
of days, as this latter event, the birthday, occurs
once a week. There are also a few months

A BURMESE WOMAN AND HER CIGAR.

To face p. 206,

BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 207

especially unlucky for a woman born under
certain stars, and no undertaking should be
commenced in those months. In fact, the Bur-
mese woman is ruled by signs and omens from
her birth to her death, and when the necro-
mancers, the wizards, the doctors, and the witches
are unable longer to keep the spirit, the little
black butterfly, within the body, and she is
gathered to her fathers, rules and traditions
govern her laying away to her last resting-place.

In former days the dead were all cremated,
but now burying has come into general use.
When death comes to a family it means elaborate
preparations and feasting from the time that the
breath has left the body and the coin is put into
the mouth to pay the ferryman for the last
journey over the lonely river, until the seven
days of mourning are over. Yet it is hard to
speak of these days as days of mourning, for
music, dancing before the bier, and the feasting
in the home would cause the onlooker at a Bur-
mese funeral tOi believe that he was witnessing
a wedding-festival instead of a scene of sorrow.

The Burmese, like most Eastern nations, spend
far top much upon their funeral observances ;
and often a man goes into debt for life to pay
for the extravagances which custom and tradition
make necessary to uphold his standing in the
community when the Angel of Death visits his
household .

A new custom, or an old custom made more
elaborate, has increased the cost of living for the

208 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

hospitable Burman. When invitations are giveii
for any festivity, the invitation is accompanied
by a present, often a silk handkerchief or a
turban, but with the rich this present is growing
more expensive, until it is becoming a burden
that is causing many of the conservative to
complain. I was told while in Mandalay that
when a certain gentleman sent out invitations
for his daughter's wedding, he accompanied each
invitation with a gold sovereign, and as he bade
more than two hundred guests to the feast, his
entertainment cost him a goodly sum before the
actual expense of the festival took place. This
useless expenditure falls heavily upon the small
official who is trying to live upon his salary, as
salaries are not large in Burmah. A gentleman
with a sense of humour was calling upon us, and
in the course of conversation we touched upon
the servant question. He asked us what a
Chinese butler received for his services in
America. I told him ten pounds a month. He
gasped, and then he laughed and a twinkle came
to his black eyes as he said : "I am an ofificial
of the city of Mandalay, and I receive just that
amount. I think I will go to America."

The Burmese woman in her home is allowed
much more liberty than any other Oriental
woman. She is her husband's equal, although
she is taught to look upon man as a superior
being; still, that is only theoretical. In actual
life she is one with him in business, his amiise-
ments, and in his religious life. He consults

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3

K

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BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 209

her upon matters of importance, and she has
proved worthy of trust and confidence, because
she has a good mind and has been allowed to use
her judgment in matters of business as well as
in her own particular realm— the home. She has
domestic troubles with which to contend, but
public opinion is helping her, especially in the
case of polygamy. This destroyer of woman's
happiness is sometimes practised, but sentiment
is against it, and it is a very brave man who cares
to run counter to the general opinion of his village
or city in regard to the number of women he
shelters beneath his roof -tree. But if the Burman
may not marry more than one woman at a time,
he may divorce as many wives as he wishes. As
the woman also shares in this prerogative, the
law is not so one-sided as it is in Mohammedan
countries. Manu, the ancient law -maker, allowed
women to divorce their husbands if they were
too poor to support them ; if they were lazy and
would not work ; or if they were incapacitated
by reason of old age, or became cripples after
marriage. The husband may send his wife away
if she bears him no male children ; if she is not
loving ; or if she is disobedient. Divorce is
purely a personal affair, and the marriage tie
may be dissolved at any time the parties con-
cerned think fit, without calling in priest or
lawyer.

There are very definite provisions in the laws
in regard to the property of the Separating couple.
In the event of divorce each party takes with

14

210 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

them the property brougiht by them to the new
home, and what they accumulated since marriage
is either divided by mutual agreement or by a
decision of the village elders who sanction the
separation .

I am told that divorce is not so conimon as
one would believe, considering the ease with
which it may be obtained. The Burman is a
very easy-going man, the Burmese wife a clever
woman who makes it her business to understand
her lord and master, and consequently she
generally rules him. " Burmah is the land of
henpecked husbands," one Burman told me,
" all the world knows our shame " — and then he
laughed.

Education is coming more slowly to the
Burmese woman than it is to the Indian or the
Egyptian. She has not seen its need, conse-
quently has not demanded it. But it will come
in time, and the intellectual broadening will free
her from the cloud of superstition that now
surrounds her and controls her actions to a
great extent.

GOLDEN PAGODA, MANDALAY.

To face p, 210.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LADY OF CHINA

It is not easy for the woman of the Occident to
understand the Hfe of the woman of the Orient.
The woman of the West, in her freedom, her
complex social life, her husband's love, looks
pityingly upon the Eastern woman in what
appears to be a seemingly restricted sphere— the
home. It is known that she is practically a
prisoner, not by force but by custom and conven-
tion ; that the wall of the compound are the walls
of the world to her. It is not realized, however,
that there she is supreme, and from within those
compound-walls, she sways to a great extent the
thought and life of China.

The Chinese lady does not lead a life of leisure
or indolence. The picture of the Eastern woman
sitting upon divans and eating sweetmeats does
not apply to the women of this country. If she
is the wife of an official or of a man of wealth,
she has a large household over which she must
preside. If the husband has a mother living the
mother is the head of the house, and her will is
absolute. This was shown rather forcibly a few

211

212 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

years ago in Peking. The son of a Chinese
official while abroad married a European woman.
She returned to Peking with her husband, and
within a few months fled to a foreign embassy
and asked protection, as she believed her life
in danger. The mother-in-law had said:
" While I was in Europe with you I was power-
less, but here I am absolute. I could even kill
you and no one would question the act. It is
my right to do with you as I wish." The
minister could do nothing, as by her marriage the
girl had become a Chinese subject and was imder
the laws of China, which gave the mother of her
husband absolute control over her life and
person.

Often there are an incredible number of people
living under one roof -tree, as all the sons bring
their wives to their father's home instead of
establishing separate households. Sheng, the
director of railways, told me that there were
250 people who took rice each day within his
compound. The walls of his garden enclosed a
small village. There was a large building con-
taining his office and residence. Radiating from
this there were rows of smaller houses, where
his brothers and married sons lived with their
numerous families.

A Chinese house, even of the very rich, is
a shabby affair, judged from Western standards.
It is always surrovinded by a wall, generally
painted white. Within the entrance gate is a
large wooden screen, placed to insure privacy.

THE LADY OF CHINA 213

and also to guard the doorways from evil spirits,
which are known to travel only in straight lines
and to abhor corners. If the family is large the
home consists of a series of houses built around
courtyards. Across the first court are the
master's rooms and offices ; then come the houses
of the different families, as each wife has a suite
of rooms for herself and her children. Some of
the wives of the more wealthy Chinese occupy
an entire building. The kitchen and the
servants' quarters are at the end of the last
courtyard.

The floors of all the rooms are of rough
boards, with great cracks between them', some-
times covered with a rug but more often bare.
The walls are composed of the same wide boards,
with here and there an embroidered hanging
or a scroll bearing the words of some honoured
sage. The furniture of the reception-room con-
sists of small tables alternating with straight-
backed chairs, arranged with mathema,tical
precision around the three sides of the room.
Opposite the doorway is the seat of honour, or an
opium-couch. Often the furniture is elaborately
carved or inlaid with mother-of-pearl, but it looks
formal and precise. The chairs, with their red
embroidered cushions, are very uncomfortable for
the Westerner, because of their straight, low
backs and high, narrow seats, that make one
long for a footstool. There are no buffets nor
sideboards in the dining-rooms, and stools are
used in place of chairs. The tables are square.

214 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

seating eight, and neither tablecloths nor napkins
are considered necessary adjuncts to dining.

The bedrooms are small, and filled wellnigh
to overflowing by an enormous carved bed, with
red embroidered curtains hanging from the heavy
canopy and long silken tassels draping the four
posts. The Chinese do not indulge in mattresses
nor springs, sheets, nor pillow-cases . The pillows
are small bolsters, and the bedclothing consists
of a series of wadded " comfortables " made of
silk or cotton. Their dislike of springs is very
intense. A hospital for the Chinese was opened
in one of the interior towns, and the doctors,
wishing to do the very best they could to make
their patients comfortable, bought, at great
expense, foreign beds with springs. They found,
to their disgust, that the patients, as soon as the
nurse turned her back, insisted on placing the
bedclothing upon the floor and lying there,
instead of in the nice comfortable beds that had
been provided for them. They claimed that the
springs made them " seasick." When Chinese
ladies are calling upon a foreign woman, one of
the chief ways to amuse them is to take them
over the house and permit them to see the
furnishings of the homes of the people from
over the sea. They are always intensely interested
in the beds and look at the springs from all
sides, sitting on them and pressing them down
with their hands, finally shaking their heads, as
much as to say, " It is past all belief what these
strange people will have in their houses."

THE LADY OF CHINA 215

The chief article of furniture in the kitchen is
the stove, a huge affair made of brick. This
stove has generally three holes, in which are
set the iron cooking -pots, shaped like large wash-
bowls and made of very thin metal, in ojrder
that the ingredients may cook with the smallest
amount of heat necessary, as the question of fuel
is a serious one in China. In the country around
Shanghai, rice -straw and faggots are the main
fuel, while on every hillside in the country one
sees women and children cutting the dried grass
and gathering every available thing that may be
burned. Because of the lack of body in the fuel
it keeps one person busy feeding the fire while
another attends to the cooking.

The food served at a feast, and which the
average foreigner sees, is quite different from that
eaten every day . At a feast there are often twenty
or thirty courses. Swallow's-nest soup, shark-
fins, pigeon eggs cooked with nuts, ducks pre-
pared in many ways, fowl, fish, and innumerable
sweets. Rice is served as the last course, while
at the ordinary dinner it is the principal dish.
It is to the Chinese what bread is to the European
or potatoes to the Irish. The food is cooked in
vegetable oil, made from beans or cabbages, or,
for the richer class, from peanuts. The chief
meat is pork, which is cut into little bits and
cooked with a vegetable. Beef is not used by
the average Chinese. The cow is a beast of
burden, and none of her products are eaten. I
have seen a great official, on being told that the

216 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

ice-cream he was eating was made of milk,
deposit upon his plate the contents of his mouth
with more haste than grace. One receives the
impression from pictures that the Chinese politely
picks up a few grains of rice with his chopsticks
and carries them slowly to his mouth. This is a
picture of Occidental imagination rather than
Oriental reality. He takes with his chopsticks
some vegetables from the dishes in the centre of
the table, to which all have access, and, after
depositing the chosen morsel on the top of his
rice, he lifts the bowl to his face and uses his
chopsticks to shovel as much of the rice into
the opening as its capacity will permit. The
Chinese are supposed to be a slow and phleg-
matic race, but if one were to judge by the
rapidity with which a bowl of rice will disappear,
one would easily give them a place among the
most rapid and progressive races of the world.
Food used by the Chinese is very cheap. The
Viceroy at Nanking, a man of unlimited wealth
and power, told me that the food for himself
did not cost more than twenty cents a day. The
servants in the American Consulate, had their
food bought by the second cook, paying him
five shillings each per month, which sum
included food, cooking, and service. On board
a foreign houseboat the captain is paid four
shillings per day for the hire of six men, and
they are fed by him out of this sum. It is made
possible by the cheapness of the vegetables. I
have seen him buy three bushels of a curly-

THE LADY OF CHINA 217

leaved vegetable resembling spinach for two-
pence .

The lady of China takes no part in her hus-
band's business or social life. Much of the
business in China among the official and rich
class is transacted socially, and the dinners are
generally given at a teahouse or restaurant, or
on the pleasure-boats kept for that purpose.
Even the very finest of these entertainment-places
are very shabby affairs, from a Western stand-
point. They are also extremely dirty. The
floors are made of unmatched boards that have
never seen the scrubbing-brush, and the guests
throw their fish-bones, cigarette-ends, etc., under
the table.

The Chinese understand the art of dining, and
we who simply go to eat cannot appreciate the
social side of this form of entertainment as does
the Eastern man. He eats a few courses, sheds
a jacket, loosens a belt, talks to a singing girl,
smokes, then eats a few more courses, gambles
a while, and really enjoys himself for four or
five hours. When he enters the room for the
feast he is given a slip, of paper, on which
he writes the name of his favourite singing girl
and her place of residence. When all the guests
arrive the slips are taken by a servant to the
different places, and at intervals during the
dinner the girls arrive. These girls are owned
by men or women who bought them' when
they were very young, and have trained them
for singing girls or professional amusers. They

218 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

sway in on their tiny bound feet, beautifully
dressed, painted and powdered, and take their
place behind the man who sent for them. They
sit on a narrow stool, chat with the man, have
a few puffs from a water pipe, eat melon-seeds
(they never eat or drink anything from the
table) ; then their maid brings them their musical
instrument, and they sing, in a high falsetto voice,
a song or two. If the song and the singer are
admired, the guests show their approval by loud
" Hah, hah's." After her song the girl arises,
says good-bye to her patron, and leaves for her
next engagement. The girl's owner receives from
four to sixteen shillings, according to the fame
of the girl ; she receives nothing, unless a present
is given her by some admirer. Many of them
have beautiful bracelets and hair ornaments of
pearls and jade, and many own gold water pipes
that are very costly. They all carry little make-
up boxes, and powder their noses whenever the
desire seizes them. To Western eyes they are
not pretty, with their red and white faces. They
paint their forehead, nose, and around their
mouth white, the cheeks and under-lip bright
red, and to obtain the proper willow -leaf pattern
for the eyebrows their own are shaved and others
more slanting are painted in their place. It is
hard to see any charm in these little women.
They sing through their noses, talk very little,
and that the most inane gossip, powder them-
selves, then bow and go away. They seem to
have neither ideas, expression, nor figure.

THE LADY OF CHINA 219

With each one of these entertainers is a maid,
who supports her as she sways along on her little
feet, and who sees that she does not try to run
away from her master. If the girl is popular and
in much demand she has a sedan chair and two
bearers ; if a very young girl, she is carried on
the shoulders of a strong, husky coolie. Many
of them lead pitiful lives, and a singing girl's
only hope of escape is to become the secondary
wife or concubine of a rich man ; then, if she
should be so fortunate as to bear a son for her
husband she would hold an honourable position,
and nothing could be said against her because of
her former life.

A Chinese gentleman is out to dinner prac-
tically every night, or else he is entertaining
friends. He sleeps until noon, goes to his par-
ticular club for amusement and to meet his
friends in the afternoon, and returns to his home
in the wee sma' hours of the night. The wife
or wives stay at home and take care of the house
and children. No Chinese lady ever dines at
a restaurant ; in fact, no Chinese lady ever eats
at the same table with her husband ; he would
" lose face " if he ate with a woman. Although
a lady is never seen dining in public, she fre-
quently gives dinner parties to her friends and
relatives. The courtyards are then filled with
the chattering chair -bearers, who, squatting on
their haunches as only an Eastern servant can,
drink innumerable cups of tea served by the
servants of the hostess. The guests are met at

220 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

the entrance to the women's quarters by the lady
of the house, and a great many bows are made,
varying in depth according to the rank of the
guest.

Each guest has a maid, who from time to time
brings her mistress a vanity box, from which is
extracted powder and rouge ; and she, like her
frailer sister, the sing-song girl, applies a little
more white to her already whitened nose, or
rouges her cheeks, or touches a little red paint
to the lower lip. Paint and powder are not con-
fined to the women of the amusement class, as
the Chinese lady ( that is, the younger ones ;
older women do not make up at all) paints her
face more than is beautiful to foreign eyes. Even
the hands are not forgotten, and within the palms
the rouge brush is used. The hands of a Chinese
lady are beautiful— long, slender, and delicate,
looking as helpless as a flower. In the olden
time .long fingernails were worn as a mark of
ladyhood, and were often covered with jade or
gold, telling plainly that the wearer belonged
to the leisured class and did not need to toil. In
fact, the whole expression of a Chinese lady is
helplessness. From her exquisitely coiflfured
head, with its mass of pearl and jade, to her
tiny feet, on which she sways instead of walks,
she impresses one as a dainty piece of jewellery,
too fragile for real life. The small feet accen-
tuated this, but now they are passing, and the
new woman of China is not binding her
daughter's feet.

THE LADY OF CHINA 221

The curse of footbinding does not fall so
heavily upon women who may sit and embroider,
or if needs must travel can be borne upon the
shoulders of their chair-bearers ; but it is upon
the poor girl, whose parents hope to have" one
in the family who may better their fortunes by a
rich marriage, and, hoping thus, they bind their
feet. If this marriage fails and she is forced
to work within her household, or, even worse, if
poverty compels her to work in the fields, or add
her mite gained by most heavy labour to help fill
the many eager mouths at home, then she should
have our pity. We have seen the small-footed
woman pulling heavy boats along the tow-paths,
or leaning on their hoes to rest their tired feet
while working in the fields of cotton. To her
each day is a day of pain, and this new law for-
bidding the binding of the feet of children will
come as a ^blessing from the gods. But it will
not pass at once, as so many now loudly pro-
claim ; it will take at least three generations :
the children of the present children will quite
likely all have natural feet. The people in
the country, far from the noise of change and
progress, will not feel immediately that they can
wander sd far afield from the old ideas of what
is beautiful in their womenkind.

The most noticeable thing about a Chinese
woman, poor as well as rich, is her hair : it is
jet-black, and made shiny and smooth with a
paste until not a strand is out of place. At
certain times of the year small wreaths are made

222 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

from tiny yellow flowers and placed around the
knot at the back. The hair is never untidy, and
the artistic disorder of the hair of the foreign
woman is secretly much disliked by the Chinese.
The late Empress-Dowager once gave the wife of
a foreign Minister a set of combs as a present.
The Minister's wife was delighted, as the gift
was enclosed in an elaborate silver box, and she
did not see the subtle suggestion in the present,
over which the Chinese of the province chuckled
for many a day.

A party of Chinese ladies presents a very gay
appearance. They wear silk or satin, nearly
always brocaded and often heavily embroidered.
In the winter, as the houses are not heated, many
furs are worn, but almost entirely, except in the
case of sable, as linings for the silken coats.
One garment is put on over the other until the
right degree of warmth is obtained. Instead
of speaking of degrees of cold, the Chinese say
it is three-coat weather or five-coat weather. The
children are clothed in wadded garments, so thick
that the overdressed babies look like little round
balls and can scarcely move. In the summer the
ladies wear delicate gauzes over their under-
garments of grass-linen.

Nearly every province in China has its own
customs and peculiarities in dress as well as in
everything else, but they all agree on the rich
reds and blues, the purples and mauves for the
making of their jackets, while their wide, skirt -
like trousers are often of a much deeper colour

THE LADY OF CHINA 223

than the jacket and trimmed with a wide band of
black. The mixture of tints sounds most incon-
gruous to foreign ears, but Chinese women have
the faculty of weaving the most clashing hues
into a work of harmonious art. Except in the
case of an old lady, black is seldom worn, and as
white is the colour of mourning, it is seen only
on occasions of sorrow. A Chinese lady can
never understand why European babies are
dressed in white. Children are the symbols of
happiness, and it seems to them most inappro-
priate to garb them in sorrow's colours. All the
gayests and brightest colours of China's dye-
pots are made to produce the clothing for China's
children .

The dress of the Chinese woman, rich or poor,
is very modest, fastening close around the neck,
with sleeves coming to the hands and the loose
jacket formed so as to disguise the lines of the
body. European women are severely censured
in China because of their decolette gowns and
tight dresses, which seem to the Chinese the
height of vulgarity. When one of the Imperial
princes was en route to England, he attended
his first foreign dinner in Shanghai. About
twenty -five of the guests were English and
American ladies, dressed in their most elaborate
gowns, which means extreme decolette. The
attaches of the prince had tried to prepare his
highness for the sight he was to witness ; but
they had evidently underestimated its startling
qualities, because when the prince arrived and

224 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

gave one amazed look at his hostess and the line
of waiting ladies he was nonplussed. He looked
pitifully for his interpreter, and, not receiving
aid from him, put down his head, shut his eyes,
and bravely stumbled around the room, groping
blindly for each lady's hand, as he had been
informed that he should shake hands with them.
This was another serious breach of Chinese
etiquette, as no Chinese man must ever touch
a woman. The Chinese views in regard to
modesty connected with the dress of women has
caused the missionaries in the interior to expur-
gate from the magazines that may by chance fall
into the hands of Chinese visitors all pictures
of lightly clad ladies who are used to advertise
soaps and powders and the underwear of our
American markets.

The Chinese are very fond of their children.
They say, " In the children our parents return
to us ; in the children we live again." When
ladies visit each other they always ask for the
children, who are brought in by the nurses . With
their jackets of red, their trousers of bright green
or purple, their baby-caps with its rows of tiny
brass Buddhas that shine and glitter like gold,
and the mark of red paint on the forehead or on
the tip of the tiny nose, they look like brilliant
little elfs. The girls are dressed quite as richly
as the boys, and it is to the interest of the nurse
to make the children as attractive as possible,
because the pleased visitor generally gives her
a small present of money wrapped in red paper.

THE LADY OF CHINA 225

Visiting a high-class Chinese lady, one is im-
pressed with the number of children and servants
that seem to be swarming over the place. When
one of a family has distinction or wealth, all the
poor relatives come to dwell with him. Li Hung-
chang built a home in Shanghai in which to
live when he should retire from private life.
When asked why he built so far from his home
province, which was contrary to Chinese custom,
he said he built as far as possible from his
native town, hoping that his poor relations could
not obtain the money with which to come to
Shanghai.

The servants in a Chinese family are not
expensive, so far as wages are concerned,
but they cost a great deal in perquisites. They
rarely receive more than eight shillings a month,
but they are given their food, and they help
themselves lavishly to anything they may desire.
They dress themselves from the old clothing of
the family, freely take the hairpins and the toilet
articles of the mistress, clothe their children from
the common wardrobe, and, in fact, are a part
of the family.

There is a peculiar democratic custom which
Servants may claim, but which is seldom used—
the right of reviling the family when discharged.
The youngest son of Li Hung-chang lived next
door to me, and an old serving-woman was dis-
charged for a reason that evidently did not appeal
to her sense of justice. She sat beneath the
gateway and for three hours called down curses

15

226 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

upon the Li family at the top of her voice. This
happened on one of the principal residence streets
of Shanghai, and the police passed and repassed,
but no one tried to stop her. The house steward
made two or three feeble attempts to persuade
her to leave, but she would turn her facile tongue
upon him, and he would gather his skirts in his
hands and start on a most undignified run for the
house, evidently believing discretion to be the
better part of valour. At the end of three hours,
when she was completely exhausted, she was led
away.

The Chinese lady and her servants gossip
together as friends, rooms are entered without
warning, conversations interrupted, and sugges-
tions offered which, to the foreigner, seem to
be of the grossest impertinence. This intimacy
is due partly to the restricted life the lady leads,
and partly to the fact that many of the servants
are distant relatives. Practically the only news
from the outside world that comes to the woman
behind the walls is brought by her sons or by
the servants. She makes few visits, and these
usually at the home of some relative, entering
her closely covered chair within her courtyard
and carried swiftly to the courtyard of the house
where she is to visit. There is no such thing as
" calling " between the wives of men who are
mutually interested in affairs or who are business
associates. The wife of a Treaty ComN^iissioner
called upon the wives of the Chinese officials
who were associated with her husband in con-

THE LADY OF CHINA 227

ducting the treaty. They were very polite and
returned her call, but are still wondering why
she called.

The wife of a consul wished to give a luncheon
to the wife of the Mayor of Shanghai. She
asked the interpreter who was assisting her in
the arrangements if other Chinese ladies of the
same rank might be asked. The interpreter said,
" No ; a Chinese lady would rather not meet
women other than relatives."

The Chinese wife lives entirely for her family
and with her family. She rarely goes to a public
place of amusement, although in some of the
ports, like Shanghai and Canton, entire families
are seen at the Chinese theatres. Theatrical
companies come to the houses of the rich and
official class for the amusement of guests, and
story-tellers and musicians, nearly always blind,
go from door to door asking to be taken into the
women's courtyards to help while away the dreary
hours. Astrologers and fortune-tellers pass
along the resident streets, striking their little
gong to attract the notice of the women behind
the walls. They are extremely clever, and cast
horoscopes in a manner similar to that of the
Egyptians of olden times . They are very popular
among the Chinese women, as are fortune-tellers
with women of all races.

We are prone to sympathize with the Chinese
woman because of the plurality of wives, but
one sees little evidence of the need of our sym-
pathy. The Chinese have a saying : " The head

228 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

wife should cherish the inferior wives as the
great tree cherishes the creepers that gather
round it." I do not know whether this sage
advice is always followed, but I have seen the
several wives of many officials, all friendly as
sisters and all working for the common good of
the home.

I called upon the wife of an official and was
met at the door by two ladies. One of them
was a very old Chinese lady, with the smallest
bound feet that I have ever seen ; they could
not have been more than 2| inches in length.
She was partially supported on one side by a
servant, and on the other by a beautifully dressed
•Manchu woman. After I was seated in the place
of honour at the left of the elderly lady, and tea
was brought, I asked the usual question, " What
is your honourable age? " She replied, " Sixty-
two " ; then, as always follows, I said, " How
many children have you? " She replied, " Five."
I asked their ages, and, to my astonishment,
heard her say that the eldest was seventeen years
and the youngest two months. When I could
find words to continue the conversation, I turned
to the Manchu lady and asked her practically
the same questions. She replied that she was
thirty-five years old, was the mother of five
children, the eldest being seventeen years and
the youngest two months. Then I realized that
the first wife had no children, but, according to
Chinese custom, claimed as her own all children
born to the secondary wives.

THE LADY OF CHINA 229

The custom was further exemplified by the
wife of a magistrate who was calHng upon tae,
accompanied by the second wife. After the
usual questions in regard to age and health,
I asked this lady how many children she
possessed. She looked at me in a puzzled
manner for a moment, then turned to the other
wife and, keeping track of the names by turning
down a finger at each count, said : " Let me see-
how many children have I ? Tsai-an has three,
Wo-kee has five— that is eight ; Ma-lu has two-
ten ; Sin Yun has four— fourteen ; Sih-peh two
—sixteen ; and you have three " ; then, turning
to me, she said, " I have nineteen children."

I have a Chinese friend who lived in Canton
until he became involved in some political trouble
that caused him to leave for Shanghai, where
he would be under the protection of the foreign
settlements . He left behind him his mother, four
wives, and sixteen children. He became lonely
in his exile, and asked his mother toi send him
a couple of his wives. She wrote him that they
were busy attending to the education of their
children, and that they did not speak the dialect
in Shanghai and would feel like strangers ;
consequently it would be better for him to marry
a couple of women native to the province, who
would be more contented. He took her
advice .

There is an American woman doctor in
Shanghai who goes to the homes of the rich
Chinese in the practice of her profession. I

230 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

asked her one day if she knew the wife of
Mr. Lu, a prominent merchant who had a most
beautiful home on the smart drive in Shanghai.
She replied that she knew a part of her— numbers
one, four, seven, and eleven. A rich man is
only restricted in the number of wives he may
possess by his ability to support them. Gossip
says — I do not know how true it is — that Yuan
Shi-kai has the unlucky number of thirteen wives
beneath the roof-tree of the President's palace
in Peking.

One would naturally suppose that endless com-
plications of a disagreeable nature, leading to
quarrels and bitterness, would arise, yet there
does not seem to be more unhappiness in the
average Chinese home than in those of any other
country. The first wife, she who has been chosen
by the parents, is the head of the household, and
her word is law, the other wives practically occu-
pying the position of servants. That is the
theory, but in actual practice she who is for-
tunate enough to be the mother of sons, or
perhaps the last girl -wife, is generally the
favourite, and wields great influence over the
master of the household. I said to a woman
calling upon me one day that I should not feel
so badly after the first wife was chosen to replace
me, but that the choice of my immediate
successor would make me very unhappy. She
looked astonished, and said : " That depends
entirely upon the woman. If she is agreeable
and pleasant, it is a pleasure to have her

THE LADY OF CHINA 231

in the family. Often a first wife chooses a
second."

We of the Western world look upon a great
many wives as a luxury only to be enjoyed by the
very rich. I have a friend who is very intimate
in a Chinese family in which there are five wives.
Since hearing her talk I have changed my mind
in regard to the luxury of the plurality of wives.
In this household the first wife lives with the
husband's family at their country place ; the
other four live with him. The husband supplies
a cook for the common use of the family, and
this cook provides rice, the staple article of food
for the household. Each wife is given a servant
and one pound a month with which to buy her
luxuries, and once a year she is given a complete
suit of silk or satin clothing, and if a favourite,
I presume she receives jewels, etc., from her
husband. A man told me that in the interior of
China (Shanghai, Peking, and some of the larger
cities are much more expensive) he could sup-
port easily his four wives and fourteen children
on an income of £200 a year.

There are many foolish women who marry
attaches of the Chinese embassies in England
and America, or, more foolish still, who marry a
Chinese merchant. They are, in fact, marrying
the romance of the East represented to them
in the person of the suave little almond-eyed
man, and they pay bitterly for their mistake if
they ever return to their husband's country. They
are recognized by neither Chinese nor foreigners.

232 THE HAEIM AND THE PURDAH

have no social standing in any community, and
lead an existence that calls for pity.

There lived in Shanghai a man who had once
been a secretary of the Legation in London. He
had a great career ahead of him until he married
an Englishwoman, when he was ordered home,
degraded, and lived for years as the petty official
in the office of the mayor of the city, at a wage
scarcely liveable even for a Chinese. His wife,
recognized by neither English nor Chinese,
became addicted to opium and drink, and died
after a few years of unhappiness. A woman
doctor told me that she found the body lying
in an outhouse, on a bundle of straw, waiting
for burial, where finally it found a resting-place
in a Chinese cemetery.

A few years ago a woman came to the English
Consul in Nanking and asked for protection.
She had married a Chinese merchant in London,
and on his return to his own country he met with
business reverses that reduced him practically
to the position of a coolie. She had been forced
to go into the paddy-fields transplanting rice.
It is bad enough to see a Chinese woman
standing in the mud and water to her knees,
doing this back-breaking work, but it would be
heartrending to see a woman of our race toiling
alongside of the ignorant Chinese peasant, under
the rays of the tropical sun, which beats down
so pitilessly upon the exposed rice-fields. The
Consul was extremely sorry for the woman, but
could not interfere in the domestic life of a

THE LADY OF CHINA 233

Chinese subject. When she found nothing could
be done for her, she took the Uttle round ball of
sleep with which so many Chinese wives pass
across the bridge of death— opium.

If these women who think that it would be
such a wonderful experience to live in the
glorious East, of which they have read most
glittering tales, would realize that when the man
returns to his homeland his parents have the
right of choosing a wife for him, who is his real
wife, and the poor foreign woman is reduced to
the position of a concubine, I think many of
them would not take a step so fatal to happiness.
Dr. Barchet, of the Baptist Mission near Ningpo,
saw an American woman living in a small village
who was one of four wives, all occupying the
same peasant's cottage. When asked why she
did not return to her homeland, she said that she
was ashamed to have her people learn of her
great mistake, as she married against their
wishes. The bad air and coarse food were
having their effect upon this delicately raised
girl, and she was a victim to the great white
plague that claims so many lives in China.

Suicide is very common among the women of
China. When the mother-in-law becomes too
oppressive, or life becomes intolerable from other
causes, the wife often takes the law into her own
hands and takes opium or jumps into the well.
She then not only receives surcease from her
sorrows, but, according to Chinese superstition,
her spirit will linger around the home, haunting

234 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and tormenting the person who was the cause of
her taking the fatal step.

There is very little intercourse between foreign
and Chinese women. The latter do not seem
to care about making the acquaintance of the
women from over the seas. It is only of late
years that the wives of foreign officials in
Shanghai have had any intercourse with the
families of the local officials. Such intercourse
consists simply in an interchange of calls, and
a luncheon given once a year by the wife of the
senior Consul, and returned by the wife of the
Chinese taotai or mayor. There can never be
any degree of friendship between the Chinese
woman and the European. Their lives are
radically different ; the Chinese woman's ideals
are not the same as those of her foreign sister.
Their only common subject of conversation is
in regard to their children ; and even there a
bar is soon put across the conversation, as the
Chinese mother has different hopes and ambitions
for the future of her children than those of the
woman from England or America. She knows
nothing of the outside world, and her only sub-
jects of conversation relate to household gossip,
clothes, and the actions of her friends. In
Shanghai a society is formed that is trying to
bring the women of all nationalities into touch
with one another, but it is not a very great
success so far as the Chinese lady is concerned.
She feels awkward and ill at ease in the presence
of these women, who talk so easily on matters

THE LADY OF CHINA 235

of which she knows nothing, and she much
prefers the quiet of her courtyards, amidst the
life she understands.

When a Chinese lady is persuaded to go into
the world she is always most dignified, even
under embarrassing circumstances. I once gave
a limcheon for the wife of a Governor of a
province, to which the wives of the consuls and
a few other ladies were invited, about twenty
in all. When the guest of honour arrived all the
other guests rose to meet her. As she entered
the doorway her tiny bound feet stepped upon
a rug, which slipped from beneath her, and
instead of swaying gently across the room she
sat down and slid to the feet of her astonishied
hostess . She was helped to rise by the frightened
guests, and turned and shook hands with them
gravely, without a flicker of the eyelids to indicate
that sliding was not the usual mode of entering
a drawing-room.

The Chinese lady is trained not to show
emotion of any kind. Her face, to be beauti-
ful, must be absolutely placid, care-free, " like
unto the full moon in its glory." They consider
the foreign woman extremely ugly, with their
long, care -lined faces. They say that if it were
not for the clothing they could not distinguish
men from women. Their faces, with their promi-
nent noses and deep-set eyes, appear to them
coarse and unrefined. I have seen children when
suddenly confronted with a foreign woman
scream in terror.

236 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

The Chinese do not impress the casual visitor
as a nervous people. It is said that they can
bear without murmuring the most severe punish-
ments, and a torture that would reduce a foreign
man to frenzy will elicit only a groan from a
member of this phlegmatic race. The women
seem to share with their menfolk in this lack of
"nerves." I once made a visit to the wife of
the city magistrate, whose home was in the
ofhcial " yamen." She showed me over her
house, and on entering her bedroom I went to
the only window in the room to see what kind of
a view was to be obtained. What was my horror
to find that the window looked directly upon
the punishment courtyard, where a man was then
being held down upon his face and a bamboo
vigorously applied by the lictor. The moans
of the victim could be faintly heard, and what it
would be in the summer-time, when the windows
were open, could very well be imagined. I
turned to my hostess and said, " How frightful I
How can you stand it?" She shrugged her
shoulders and said, " Oh, one becomes used
to it."

The Chinese woman is very devout, and
observes all the feast-days and days of fasting.
It is really the woman who keeps up the religion
of Confucius and Buddha. An official who had
just returned from sacrificing to the dragon who
was supposed to have swallowed the sun at the
time of an eclipse, was asked if he believed in
this dragon. He laughed and said, " Of course

'-- >W)5m»-

2 <

THE LADY OF CHINA 237

not." " Then," the curious questioner continued,
" why do you do it ? " He said, " -Why do men
in America go to church? Mainly because their
wives wish them to go. It is the same here.
It is the women who are the spiritual force of
China. It is they who are devout, and it is they
who keep open the tempjes and preserve the
belief in the gods."

The Chinese woman's religion is difficult of
definition, but whatever she is, a follower of the
teachings of Confucius or of the Great Buddha,
she turns to her gods both in time of trouble
and in time of thanksgiving. It is a real factor
in her life. Buddhism has a great festival in
the spring, about the time of our Easter. Then
the roads are covered with processions of women
going or coming from the temples. All ranks
are seen— the lady borne swiftly along in her
sedan-chair with the spirit money hanging from
the poles ; the middle -class woman riding on
the passenger wheelbarrows with four or five
of her friends, with her incense and candles in
her lap ; and the poor woman trudging along the
stone -covered road, carrying her offerings in a
basket of rice-straw which she has woven at
home. When they arrive at the temple they
are all of one great sisterhood. The spirit money
of rich and poor alike is placed in the great
incense-burner in the outer courtyard, where it
goes up in flames to the gods. Then the temple
is entered, the candles are lighted, and the
incense is placed before the particular deity

238 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

whose kind offices they implore ; the head is
touched to the floor, prayers are uttered, and
the woman returns to the courtyards, where she
may pass the time with her friends, feeding the
carp in the ponds or admiring the great trees
which are found within the courts of many of
the big temples. If a special boon is to be
asked, or if there is doubt and trouble, she takes
a hollow bamboo vase, about the size of a quart
measure, in which are a couple of dozen sticks
of slit bamboo. She kneels three times, touch-
ing her head to the floor each time, then shakes
the bamboo with a rotary motion until one of
the sticks detaches itself from the others and
falls to the floor. This she takes to a priest, who
reads the number upon it and gives her a slip
of yellow paper covered with Chinese characters,
and from it she will find the answer to her
prayers. It takes considerable imagination to
obtain solace from one of these pieces of paper,
as they are made to fit all cases, and carry about
as much meaning as does the " fortune " on the
card handed one by the figure in the slot-machine
for which we pay a penny.

The gods are not only worshipped at the
temples, but religious adoration plays an im-
portant part in the home-life. Over the kitchen
stove, in a niche, reposes the household god.
From that high place he watches all that goes
on within the household. He knows the sins
of commission and the sins of omission. Once
a year he is taken down and with great ceremony

THE LADY OF CHINA 239

burned and sent up to the Great God to report
upon the actions of the household for the year,
and a new god is installed in his place. In the
meantime he is propitiated in various ways. The
first thing in the morning a small bowl of rice
and another of water is placed before him, and
incense and candles are burned daily at his feet
to gain his favour.

Priests are frequent visitors at the homes, and
religious ceremonies attend all the great family
events, like the first shaving of the baby's head,
or that most important day when the mother
attains her fiftieth year. This is a day of general
rejoicing, when her children unite and buy the
happy mother the greatest and most precious
present she can receive — her grave-clothes. They
are presented amidst much feasting, and chanting
of prayers, and burning of candles and incense,
and the mother is congratulated by all her friends
for the blessing of such filial children.

CHAPTER XV
THE EED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE

The home must have its basis in marriage, and
to that important episode in woman's Ufe the
greatest attention is given. In China, as in India,
the betrothal ceremony is as binding as the
marriage, although I am told that the " new
woman " of China is rebelling at the child be-
trothals and the lack of freedom granted her in
the choice of a mate. It is said that in Shanghai
a couple who have been betrothed in childhood
by their parents, on arriving at marriageable
age, may go before a magistrate and repudiate
the agreement, and in many instances their cases
have been upheld even against the protests of
father and mother. This shows the most extreme
progressiveness of present-day China, as hitherto
a child, especially a girl, was simply a chattel to
be disposed of according to the dictates of the
nearest male relative. Still, with the exception
of the foreign settlement of Shanghai, the old
customs of betrothal and marriage prevail, and
the principals in the marriage have very little

to say in regard to the disposal of their future.

mo

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 241

Often clhildren are betrothed before their birth
by parents, who, being good friends and desiring
to unite the families, agree that if a boy is born
in one family and a girl in the other, they shall
marry. Other matches are made by a profes-
sional " go-between," who is employed by the
parents of either the boy or girl to find a suitable
alliance for their child. This " go-between " is
so thoroughly recognized that the Chinese have
a saying, " Without a go-between no happy
marriage can be effected,"

After the search culminates in the discovery
of the bride and groom' of equal social standing
and endowed with the proper amoimt of this
world's goods, the names of the girl and boy
are written upon a paper and taken to the necro-
mancer, who decides whether the marriage will
be fortunate. Every child is bom under the
protection of some animal ; if the protecting
animal of the daughter is a sheep and that of her
fiance a lion, naturally they should not marry.
But if the guardian animal of the bride-to-be
should be a bird, they will live in peace with one
anothfer. The girl must be thirteen or fifteen
or seventeen years of age, as an even number
would be most unlucky. Seventeen years is
about the average marriageable age of a Chinese
girl at present, although formerly they married
when hardly more than children.

The marriage customs are essentially the same

all over China. The husband gives a certain sum

of money to the bride's parents, which varies

16

242 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

with the position of the famihes. Among the
poor the girl is practically sold, althougOi the
money is supposedly used for the purchase of
the wedding outfit. The bride's standing in the
family of the husband often depends largely upon
the trousseau and the furnishings she takes with
her to her new home.

The outfit a girl of the middle class should
take with her, in order that she might command
the proper respect of her new relatives, should
include three red trunks, one table, two chairs,
one wardrobe, three tubs, two buckets, one wash-
stand, one dressing-case, a set of scissors, a foot-
stove, a teapot, wine -pot, two candlesticks, a
basin, sugar-bowl, tea-caddy, one set of cups,
a complete set of bowls and dishes, two wadded
quilts, two embroidered pillows, embroidered
curtain for the bed, and a complete outfit of
clothing.

This donation of the bride's parents to the
formation of a new home is carried before the
bride in the wedding procession. Often
musicians herald the coming of a bride, who,
from her closely covered red chair, watches with
beating heart the procession taking her to her
new mother-in-law, who can make of her future
home a prison or a palace of love. When she
finally arrives at the house, that is decorated with
red hangings and long scrolls of red silk and
flowers, both real and artificial, she sees her
husband for the first time as she steps over the
threshold. After the one quick look, they go

THE EED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 243

before the ancestral tablet, and, kneeling, touch
their heads three times to the floor. Thus she
shows that she is now one of the family, wor-
shipping her husband's ancestors instead of those
of her own family ; and after prostrating them-
selves before her husband's parents and drinking
from the same cup as a symbol of their unity,
they retire to a room, where they sit upon two
red chairs and the merry-making begins. Their
friends come in, and, facing them, try to make
the bride laugh, showing that she will be a most
frivolous woman. There is much music, feasting,
and playing of tricks on this joyous occasion,
and for this little woman, dressed in red satin
embroidered in gold, with a big crown upon her
head and bead-fringe hanging over her face, the
three days of the wedding festivities are most
wearying. But she realizes that she must enjoy
them if she can, because after they have passed
she settles down into the daughter-in-law, which
too often proves to be almost the place of a slave,
or at the most a household drudge. One can
imagine the discord and strife there is within a
household where there are several sons who are
married, each bringing his wife to his parents'
homfe. I knew a family of grandparents, parents,
and children numbering thirty-eight, all living
in one modest house. We can understand the
Chinese savant making the character for discord
a roof with two women under it.

Often in a rich girl's dowry are slave-girls, and
although it is really against the law to own slaves,

244 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

it is, in fact, one of the great evils of China.,

These helpless people are owned by even the

poor. The mother of my maid possessed two

slave-girls whom she had bought when very

young. She treated them well, and when they

grew to marriageable age expected to find

husbands for them, giving them an outfit of

clothing and a small dowry. In times of famine

girls are sold for very small amounts of mbney

or exchanged for the more precious rice. This

seems most cruel ; but in order that the rest of the

family may live, one must be sacrificed. When

everything of value is sold, when the winter

clothing is in the pawnshop, when there is no rice

to give to cryingl children, then there is but one

thing left for the despairing mother, she must

sell her daughter. Chinese mothers are the same

as mothers from all over the world, and she only

parts with her little girl as a last resort, to the

merchants whb follow the disasters and fatten

on the misery of the Chinese peasant. When it

has become known that a famine has made

desperate the poor of a province, the merchants

from the tea-houses and the brothels of the great

cities go to the little towns and villagies in the

track of the famine, and buy the girls from the

fathers and mothers, who can see nothing but

death ahead for all unless they sacrifice one. The

clever, pretty girls are trained for the tea-houses,

inmates of brothels, or concubines of rich men.

The ugly, stupid ones are domestics, and often

are most cruelly treated.

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 245

The owners prefer buying the girl very young,
from five to seven years of age, when she can be
more easily trained. If she is a pretty girl, her
feet must be bound, and if this is a cruel opera-
tion under the tender hands of a mother, hOiW
much more dreadful it may become when
attended to by some one whose only thought is
to profit by the girl's beauty 1

The slaves in a rich family fare very well.
Each child is given one or two personal servants,
and when the children grow up and marry they
follow them to the new home. Often a pretty,
attractive slave-girl becomes the secondary wife
of her master, and if she should be so fortunate
as to bear him sons, she ranks with her mistress
in the honour given her within the household.

There is a home in Shanghai for the rescue of
little girls whose mistresses are more than ordin-
arily cruel. There is also a branch of the
Florence Crittenden work for the rescue of girls
sold to tea-houses. It is very hard for the people
who are engajged in this good work to obtain the
girls unless they are so badly treated that it
comes to the notice of the magistrate, who may
send the girl to the home for a given period.

I saw a pitiful case at a hospital at Soochow.
We were sitting in the clinic when a very pretty
woman came in and threw herself on her knees
before the doctor and began to cry. She said
between her sobs : " Oh, foreign doctor, help me
to get away, help me, help me ! " She was a
respectable girl frorri Ningpo who had been sold

246 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

by her husband to a place in Soochow for four
years. She loathed the life, and when for the
first time she had eluded the old woman who
always goes out with these unfortunates to see
that they do not get away, she had appealed to
the only hope she knew. Yet that appeal was
useless, as nothing could be done for her. She
was nothing but a chattel of her husband, accord-
ing to Chinese law, and he had a perfect right
to sell her if he wished. I saw another pretty girl
of sixteen who had been sold for eighty dollars
to the same place. She came to the hospital to
have her back treated, as she had been severely
beaten with a brick because she would not make
herself sufficiently pleasing to a guest.

But the average Chinese girl goes to her
husband's home quite likely within a short
distance of her girlhood village, and passes a
most uneventful life, one day being exactly like
another unless broken by the ceremonies attend-
ing the births, weddings, and deaths of her hus-
band's people. Every village is surrounded by
trees and is exactly like its neighbour, with its
one-story, thatched-roof houses, or, perhaps, if
the owner is especially prosperous, the pointed
roofs may be formed of blue-grey tiling. Part
of the front yard is beaten and made smooth to
be used for threshing the rice, the front room
of the house is used for the storing of the farm-
ing implements, and the other rooms are given
to the different members of the family according
to their needs. There is no light and little venti-

W"' ! '"! >W t. '

RAIN-COATS OF CHINESE WORKMEN.

To face p. 246.

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 247

lation in these rude village homes. Windows are
expensive and cold, as the houses are not heated
in the winter. The mothers may be seen sitting
in their doorways, holding in their hands brass
hand-warmers, in which are a few burning coals
of charcoal, and under their feet are the braziers
which provide the only heat for these poor people
during the cold months of the year.

The life lived by these village people is life
reduced to its simplest form. The main food is
rice and a little cabbage. Meat is an unknown
quantity unless on special feast days. Beef is not
used, as the cow is a beast of burden, and the
Chinese have the same feeling in regard to its
flesh that we have for the flesh of horses . Ducks,
chicken, eggs, fish, crabs, snails, and clams are
the poor man's luxuries. No hole is too muddy
nor water too filthy for a fish-net to be drawn
across it, or for the little crowd of boys who
catch the crabs to help fill the family pot.

The question of clothes is a simple one and
easily solved. The father wears a pair of blue
cotton trousers in the summer, while the mother
wears the same style garment with the addition
of an apron effect which covers the bust. An
amulet and a string are sufficient clothing for the
children during the warm days, but when winter
cotties the wadded clothing must be brought
forth, often from the pawnshop, where it goes
in the spring to obtain money to buy the seed
for planting.

The great prayer which rises from the heart

248 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of all Chinese women, rich and ppor, peasant
and princess, is to Kwan-yin for the inestimable
blessing of sons. " Sons, give me sons ! " is
heard in every tetople. A woman is not honoured
until she has sons to worship at the tablets of
her husband's ajicestors. One of the chief
reasons for divorce in China is the lack of sons,
and if the first wife has no male children, and the
secondary wife has borne sons to her lord, the
lot of the first wife is very bitter. In one of the
foreign hospitals in Shanghai for Chinese women,
the wife of an official in Tientsin gave birth, much
to her sorrow, to a girl. She was inconsolable,
and would not allow the dreadful news to be
sent to her home, and the doctors feared that
she would take her life. But through a servant
the unhappy woman saw a way to regain the
love and respect of her family. At the same
time that the daughter was born to her a beg'gar-
woman in the charity department gave birth to
a boy. She bought the boy and telegraphed
her husband, " Thou art the father of twins."

One of the upper servants in a consulate, grow-
ing rich on the foreign spoils, took to himself a
second wife, giving as his excuse that he had
four daughters and no sons. At the birth of a
son to the new wife the first wife tried to starve
herself to death, and failing that, took opium
and gained her wish. She could not survive
the ignominy of beingi only the mother of girls.

Sons mean so much to a Chinese mother that
she feels that the gods must be jealous of her

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 249

happiness, consequently she puts an ear-ring in
one ear of her boy to deceive the god and make
him think the loved one is a girl. She also calls
him her " ugly one," her " stupid one," or simply
gives him a number so the gods will not see how
much he is loved and covet her treasure. There
is an economic reason behind all this love for
the man-child. A poor Chinese, a workman,
cannot save enough money to provide for even
his simple wants in his old age. Try as he may,
he can only earn enough to live upon from day
to day, but if he has sons he knows that when
old age comes, and he can no long'er work, that
care will be given him and he will not want.
There is no crime so great as the lack of filial
piety, and the State punishes severely the son
who does not provide for his aged parents.
Indeed, of the five punishments of the criminal
code directed against three thousand offences,
disobedience or neglect of parents is the most
severe.

An illustration of this occurred not long a'go
in the interior of China. A man arose in the
night at the sound of a burglar, and in the
struggle in the dark the robber was killed. On
bringing a light it was found that the robber was
the father of the man whose house he entered.
He was known to be a ne'er-do-well, but the
unparalleled act of killing one's own father
aroused intense excitement in the whole province.
The case was deemed of such importance that it
could not be tried by the local magistrate, but

250 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

it was transferred to the courts in Peking, which
condemned the man to death, not because he
killed the robber, but because his father had
evidently been compelled to rob for a living.

Another similar case came to the notice of the
foreigners in Shanghai. A man accidentally hit
his father with a hoe, causing his death. The
whole village took the man to the city, but while
on the road they met the magistrate, who asked
them not to bring the dreadful case before him
officially, but for the clan or village to mete out
the punishment and then report to him. They
buried the son alive.

Missionaries from a town in the interior asked
the American Consul to intervene in the case of
a boy nine years old, who, while in play, allowed
a stool accidentally to slip ftom his hand, hitting
his mother on the head and killing her. He was
condemned to death, but because of his youth was
to be kept in prisop until he was sixteen, when
he would pay the penalty. The Consul did all
in his power to save the boy, but, outside of
friendly arguments, nothing could be done, as
he was a Chinese subject and came under the
jurisdiction of Chinese courts of law.

Because of this necessity for the provision for
the old age of parents, there are no homes for
the aged nor houses for the poor in China, unless
one excepts those established through foreign
influence. Each family must take care of its
own helpless, and if a person is so unfortunate
as to have no family, the begging bowl by the

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 251

roadside is the only recourse when the years are
many and the once strong arms are weak.

The filial piety and respect for parents that are
so strongly entrenched in the Chinese character
causes the son to obey his father until the day
of his death. I know a man fifty years of age
who was offered the post of secretary of the
Embassy in London, but who declined this very
advantageous position because his mother did
not want him to go to a foreigti land. He gave
up willingly the chance of a lifetime rather than
cause sorrow to his mother in her old age.

A mission in a certain town was very desirous
of buying a certain piece of ground on which to
erect a church, and the plan was balked by
the local official. The missionary conducting the
negotiations could find no suitable reason for the
official's action in the matter, and finally asked
the help of his consul. The taotai was firm
in his refusal, and offered the mission land in
another part of the city for their church. When
pressed for a reason for his refusal he finally
said : " My mother passes that place each time
she goes to her favourite temple, and she objects
to a building holding a foreign god being erected
there. She thinks it would pollute the good
spirits of the air. I know it is what you call
superstition, but she is my mother and I must
obey her wishes."

Family life has been from time immemorial
the foundation-stone of the Chinese Empire, and
filial piety is the foundation-stone of the family

252 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

life. The Chinese is taught that the interest of
the family is always of greater importance than
the interest of the individual. This respect and
veneration is not only for the living, but also
for the dead. The death days of two genera-
tions of parents are kept sacred with solemm
rites, arid every home has its family shrine, to
which all the members must pay due reverence.

This respect and worship is paid by the woman
to the ancestors of her husbajid's family, as it is
her destiny on reaching womanhood to go to a
new home and live in submission to her new
parents, and burn incense before the shrines of
her husband's people. When she marries she
practically leaves her home for ever. If she is
returned to it— that is, if she is divorced—" shame
shall cover her to her latest hour." Divorce is
very rare in China, but there are seven reasons
given for divorcing a wife. The first is dis-
obedience to father- or mother-in-law, barren-
ness, lewdness, leprosy, over -much talking, and
stealing.

The woman is taught that her lifelong duty
is obedience. Her husband must be looked upon
as " heaven itself," and she must pay all outward
respect to his parents. Her first duty each morn-
ing is to bring a cup of tea to the bedside of her
husband's mother, and to bow her head before
her as a sign of submission and respect. She
is taught that the only qualities that benefit a
woman are gentle obedience, chastity, quietness,
and mercy, and that the five worst infirniitie§

THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 253

that may afflict a female are indocility, discon-
tent, slander, jealousy, and silliness, Confucius
says : " These five vices are found in seven or
eight out of every ten women, and it is from
these that arise the inferiority of the sex."

Generations of this teaching has made the
Chinese woman into a modest, quiet, lovable
woman, to be protected and cared for, appealing
to all that is chivalrous in her menfolk, her
very weakness her greatest strength.

CHAPTER XVI

WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE

In a country where the worship of ancestors
plays such an important part in the religion, death
has a greater meaning than it has for those of
Western lands. The Chinese spend far too much
upon the ceremonies connected with death, rich
and poor alike vying with each other in the
elaborate arrangements for the disposal of their
dead. I met not long ago the funeral proces-
sion accompanying the body of a captain of
labour to his last resting-place. He was many
times a millionaire, who began life as a boat-
man. The sons boasted that they spent twenty
thousand dollars on his fimeral. There were
eight native bands in the procession, led by the
European band of Shanghai, twenty men carry-
ing banners and umbrellas, about fifty men
carrying scrolls, on which were written the name
and rank of the deceased ; there were over two
hundred Buddhist priests, dressed in their sack-
cloth robes, and the wailing mourners and
friends in their mourning clothes of white,

WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE 255

followed in sedan-chairs and carriages. The
enormous coffin was covered with red
embroidered satin and carried by thirty; chant-
ing coolies. Within the home the walls were
covered with white, and there were long scrolls
from friends telling of their sympathy and of
the greatness of the deceased family. At twenty
tables, seating eight each, feasting was carried
on day and night for a week.

In the summer-time there are hundreds of
deaths, and the funerals of the poor pass our
house daily. They are very different from the
elaborate processions of the rich men. The
coffins, instead of being made of the finest teak
or heaviest ebony, are nothing but plain, rough
boxes, and the mourners either are on wheel-
barrows or they walk to the place of the dead,
the weeping wife being supported on each side
by a friend, who practically carries her as she
stumbles along in her grief. Paper money is
always scattered in front of the corpse in order
to pay his way into the new world ; and
often one sees either a live rooster or an
imitation one standing on the coffin to bring
back to his home one of the man's three
souls .

The body is often kept months within the
houses before a suitable day is found by the
necromancer on which to bury him, but because
of the manner of preparing for burial it is not
insanitary to keep a corpse in the house for a
few months. The coffins are made of hardwood

256 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of four or five inches in thickness. First a
certain number of bags of lime are placed in
the bottom, varying according to the weight of
the person ; over that is laid a wadded blanket,
if of a rich family it is of silk and often
embroidered, if the person be poor it is only
cotton ; the body is laid in the coffin, dressed
in as handsome a suit of wadded clothing as is
consistent with the means of the family ; the
ancestral tablet is laid upon the breast, paper
money at the feet ; he is covered with the blanket
and the coffin hermetically sealed. The coffin
is the most precious possession of the Chinese,
and is often purchased years before death in
order that they may be sure of a dignified last
resting-place .

We often hear stories told at women's clubs
of mothers who throw babies within the " baby
tower " to die. These baby towers are small,
round houses, situated on the outskirts of a city
or a village for the purpose of permitting the
poor to dispose of their dead children without
the expense of a coffin or a funeral. The interior
of the house is partially filled with quicklime,
and a small door opening on to a slanting chute
permits the poor mother to give her baby its
final resting-place. I have never heard of a
case of a live baby being sent to these baby
towers, as I found that a mother's heart is the
same all over the world. My cook came to me
one morning with his eyes red from weeping.
I asked him the cause of his sorrow, and he

WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE 257

told me that his three -months -old baby had died
the evening before. He had no money with
which to pay for its burial, so in the night, when
the mother had at last fallen into a sleep, he
softly arose and, wrapping the tiny body in a
blanket, had laid it upon the table with twenty
cents beside it in order that the garbage -man
who came in the early morning might take it
to the baby tower outside the city. I said to
him : " But, cook, why did you not bury it
properly? Does not your wife feel very badly? "
He shook his head sorrowfully, and said : " Yes,
she too muchee cry, but what can we do? We
must buy rice for live babies." That is the great
secret of the stoicism of the Chinese race. They
must buy rice for the living, and what often
seems to us as heartlessness and cruelty is
simply the effect of the great economic pressure
in a land where millions are on the verge of
starvation, and where the lack of a day's work
means the lack of a day's food.

In times of great epidemics rich Chinese and
the guilds or clubs of different forms of industry,
such as the Bankers' Guild, the Tea Guild, or the
Goldsmiths' Guild, provide coffins for the burial
of the poor, and in times of famine these same
guilds are most generous to their less fortunate
brothers. Near Soochow is a tomb of a man
who gave his entire fortune to relieving the wants
of the people of his province during a time of
famine. He is buried in the most picturesque
spot in the hills, the road to which is bordered

17

258 THE HAKIM AND THE PURDAH

by a great many enormous boulders that rise
straight up from the ground. The Chinese say
that these stones stood up to show their
respect for the great man when his body
was carried to its last resting-place and that
they are waiting his commands to lie down
again.

The dead are buried on the family estate ; if
there is not room for all, a spot is leased from
a neighbour. The interment is not beneath the
surface except in a few provinces ; the coffin
is set on the groimd and the dirt is heaped over
it. Sometimes the fields are so thickly covered
with mounds that there is little room left for
cultivation. Especially is this so in the coimtry
around Shanghai, which looks to the casual
passer-by like one vast graveyard. Funeral
expenses for parents are the most sacred of
obligations, and it is not uncommon for the sons
to part with everything they have in the world in
order to render proper respect to the memory
of their parents. A son is supposed to mourn
three years for his father, during which time all
occupation is to cease. In the case of a son
holding an important official position, he often
has to resign his post during the period of mourn-
ing, or else be called unfilial. Strict mourning
for the mother only lasts three months, otherwise
the same honour is paid her memory as given
to the head of the household.

•When a woman is left a widow, she often vows
that she will not remarry, and she spends her life

WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE 259

in pious acts that cause her village or her clan
at her death to erect a memorial to her honour.
This is generally in the form of an arch, built
of stone and erected near her village. In the
country districts one can see many of these con-
crete evidences of the respect which the Chinese
have for loyal womanhood.

CHAPTER XVII

CHANGING CHINA

China is changing so rapidly, and is becoming
so thoroughly Westernized, especially in the ports
where the Chinese come in contact with the
foreigner, that she can scarcely be recognized
by her old-time friends. We all admit that the
change is for the better so far as the nation is
concerned, but whether it makes for the indi-
vidual good is another and more serious question.
China is flooded with foreigli adventurers who
want her untouched wealth, and who have cast
their greedy eyes upon her mines of coal and
iron and gold. These foreigners from all classes
and grades of society have brought dishonesty
and corruption in business dealings to the
merchant of China, whose word in the old time
was as good as his bond. In those days when
a Chinaman said, " Can putee book," it was
known that the contract was settled and that
he would live up to his spoken word, whether
it meant loss or profit to him. But when dealing
with the foreigner the Chinese found that there

CHANGING CHINA 261

were no old-time customs to bind the merchant
from over the seas, except those of bond and
written agreement. If he had any traditions of
honour, he evidently left them in the homeland,
as nothing less than a court of law would hold
him to his contract if it seemed expedient for
him to break it.

For years the word " China " meant to the
adventurer of other lands a place for exploita-
tion, where money was to be obtained easily by
the man with fluent tongue and winning ways.
Even foreign officials did not scruple to use their
influence to enter trade. In one of the great
inland cities there was no water nearer than a
river several miles away. A foreign official,
boring an artesian well upon his place and find-
ing pure, clear water, conceived the idea of boring
wells throughout the city and bringing water to
the doors of the half-million of people whC) re-
sided in its narrow streets. He interested the
officials and raised a sum of money, and to doubly
assure the Chinese that their money was safe he
signed the contracts, not only with his name
but affixed to them the great seal of his Govern-
ment. After a few months' trip to his home-
lands, and a few aimless borings in the earth
in search of the water that never came, he re-
linquished the project, but not the money, and
the officials could do nothing but gaze sadly into
the great holes that had taken their silver. They
learned that wisdom comes with experience and
now put into practice the proverb : " When a

262 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

man has been burned once with hot soup, he for
ever afterwards blows upon cold rice."

Another case in which the Chinese officials
were duped by clever -tongued foreigners was in
Ningpo. Three Americans visited that city and
talked long and loud of the dark streets, the
continual fires caused by the flickering lamps of
oil that were being constantly overturned by the
many children. They showed the officials the
benefits of electricity, that a light upon
each corner would make it impossible for
robbers and evildoers to carry on their work,
which must be done in darkness . They promised
to turn night into day, to give poor as well as
rich the incandescent lamp at no greater cost than
the bean-oil wick. They were most plausible,
and raised thirty thousand dollars as contract
money. They, left, ostensibly to buy machinery ;
the years have passed ; they never have returned.
Ningpo still has streets of darkness, men still
walk abroad with lighted lanterns, the lamp is
seen within the cottage, and will continue to be
quite likely until the hills shall fade, if electricity
depends upon the officials who once dreamed
dreams of a city lit by a light from Western lands.

This is one of the most serious handicaps of
the missionary in trying to Christianize China.
The dissolute white man is in every port, mani-
festing a lust, greed, and brutality which the
Chinese, who are accustomed to associate the
citizenship of a person with his religion, attri-
bute to Christianity. It is no wonder that it is

CHANGING CHINA 263

hard for the missionary to make converts among
the people who have business dealings with men
from Christian nations.

But there are other questions besides those of
business integrity vitally affecting the Chinese
youth to-day. Along with the slight knowledge
which they have obtained of the manners and
customs of the Western world, they have absorbed
many of its vices. With their rose -wine and their
samshu the Chinese boy has learned to drink
champagne and brandy. I know the father of
five sons who told me that he would give all
that he possessed in the world if he had not
brought those sons to Shanghai.

Change is now the order of the day in China,
educationally as well as politically. We do not
hear the children shouting their tasks at the top
of their little voices, nor do they learn by heart
the thirteen classics. The simple schoolroom,
with hard benches and earthen floor, with a faint
light striking through the unglazed windows, is
no more. The old-time examinations at Peking
have gone, the degrees which have been the
nation's pride have been abolished, the subjects
of study in the schools have been completely
changed. The privileges which were once given
the scholars, the social and political offices which
were once open to the winners of the highest
prizes, have been thrown upon the altar of
modernity. The faults of the old system of
education lay in the stress it placed upon
the memorizing of the many books whose con-

264 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

tents were not always understood by. the young
mind, and in the lack of original ideas that might
be expressed by a student, who must give the
usual interpretation of the classics. Now the
introduction of free thought and private opinion
has produced an upheaval in the minds of China's
young men, and they say what they think, even
trying to show that Confucius was at heart a
staunch Republican, and that Mencius only thinly
veiled his sentiments of modern philosophy. It
is generally conceded that the newer education
leads to the greater individualism which is now
the battle-cry of China.

The Chinese, both men and women, are reach-
ing out eager hands to obtain for themselves the
knowledge that is being brought from other
lands. Yet this thirst for education is not a
newly acquired virtue, for in no country is real
learning held in higher esteem than in China.
It is the greatest characteristic of the nation that
in every grade of society education is considered
above all else. As a race they have devoted
themselves to the cultivation of literature for a
longer period by some thousands of years than
any existing nation. To literature, and to it alone,
they look for the rule to g^ide them in their
conduct. To them all writing is sacred, and the
very symbols and materials used in the making
of the written character have become objects of
veneration. Even the smallest village is pro-
vided with a scrap-box, into which every bit of
paper containing printed or written words is care-

CHANGING CHINA 265

fully placed, to await a suitable occasion when
it may be burned.

The mission schools have been the pioneers
in the education of the young people of China,
and if the teaching of Christianity has not as
yet made many, converts, the efifect has been
great in the spread of higher ideals of educa-
tion, and much of the credit of the progress of
the modern life of China to-day must be given
to the mission schools, which have opened new
pathways in the field of learning and caused
the youth of China to demand a higher syiStem
of education throughout the land.

It is said that practically all the officials in
the new China are men who have been educated
abroad or who have been in one of the many
mission schools scattered throughout the country.
They are the ones who have taken what they
have learned of foreign lands and adapted it to
the needs of their country ; but there are others
who have been abroad only long enough to
acquire the veneer of Western education, and
they are the y;0ung men who becomfe the dis-
contented ones of China.

When Chinese boys go to a foreigin land they
have many difficulties to overcome. They must
receive their information and instruction in a
language not their mother tongtie. They have
small chance to finish their education by prac-
tical work in bank or shop or factory. They get
a mass of book knowledge and little opportunity
to practise the theories that they learn, and they

266 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

are not clever enough to understand that their
textbook knowledge is nearly all foreign to their
country and to the temperament of their rade.
When they return to their home they often find
that they have grown out of touch with their
people's ways and customs. They come back
looking for employment, for a chance to use
their new-found knowledge ; but they feel that
they should begin at the top of the ladder instead
of working up slowly rung by rung, as their
fathers did before them. They feel that they
are entitled to be masters, not realizing that
even with this wonderful foreign education
acquired, experience is necessary to make them
leaders of great enterprises or of men. It is
these boys who are the teashop orators and
preach the Socialistic dogma for which China
will not be prepared for many years to come.

The Chinese boys and girls are going too far
and too fast in their thirst for the broader know-
ledge and teaching of the Western world. It is
like the clothes that the Chinese girl is wearing,
trying to imitate her sisters of the Occident. She
has discarded the soft, clinging silks, the gay
embroideries, the jade and flowers in her black
locks, for the straight, dark skirt, the ugly
coats, and the untidy manner of dressing the
hair seen with the European women of the
coast towns. These do not become her, any
more than the scientific degrees become the
woman who has been for centuries a woman
of the home. We do not condemn education

CHANGING CHINA 267

for the Chinese woman any more than we
entirely condemn the change in the style of
clothing ; but they should both be adapted to
the individual. This new education seems to
be too general, the personality of the boy or
girl being entirely left out. The youth are being
made into a set of jelly-moulds, all looking alike,
all trying to be formed upon the models brought
them from England or America.

Three things should be taken into account —
who the boy or girl is, where he is, and where
he is going. The mistake should not be made
in China that has been made in India — that is,
the turning out of a race of barristers and clerks
from her schools. China needs technical schools
for her boys and common sense applied to the
education of her girls. I have been in a school
for the education of the daughters of the better
class of Chinese, where the main accomplishment
for which the girl was applauded was her
facility in rendering a piece upon the piano.
I should have said " executing " a piece upon
the piano, because that is exactly what is
done when a Chinese girl attempts to inter-
pret foreign music. It is alien to her in every
way, and generations of study will not make the
Chinese maiden a musician in the foreign sense,
nor will they really care for the foreign music.
These girls who have wasted so many hours
in the practise of the piano will go to homes
where they cannot have a piano, or if they did
have one they would be the only persons in

268 THE HAKIM AND THE PURDAH

the family who would appreciate its music. It
would be a conglomeration of bad sounds to
father, mother, husband. Many feel that the
young girls would be better employed in
learning a musical instrument understood
and appreciated by her people and one
that would give pleasure to her husband at
night, and perhaps be a factor in keeping
him from the tea-house, and the singing-girls who
have a monopoly of the musical talent of China.

Another thing that causes sorrow to the
conservative fathers and mothers is the fact that
as soon as their children receive a smatter-
ing of the Western civilization they immediately
begin to scofif at their own modes of acquiring
knowledge and the textbooks which have trained
their people's minds for so many years. They
become proud of the fact that they know nothing
of the classics, and they quote Shelley, Byron,
Burns, and Browning instead of their own beau-
tiful poets. But, what is more serious for the
youth of this Eastern land, this worldly know-
ledge seems to have freed his intelligence
without teaching him self-control, and it has
taken him away from the gods of his fathers
without replacing them with others. He, like
his cousin of Japan, is inclined to become
agnostic and say, "There are no gods."

Whether the religion from the West is the
religion best suited for the Oriental we cannot
say, but whatever he receives from us must
be adapted to fit the needs and conditions

CHANGING CHINA 269

of his race and country. China mtast raise
up leaders from her own people, both men
and women, as her regeneration will come
from within, not without. More and more
the West must see that the East and the
West may meet, but they can never mingle.
Foreigliers can never enter the inner door of
Chinese thought or feeling. The door is never
wholly opened, the curtain never quite drawn
aside between the two races. They are unlike
in almost every characteristic. The Westerner
is much more a materialist than is the cultured
man of China. To him the taste of the tea
is not so important as the aroma, and the
acquiring of wealth and honours is not so much
to be desired as is the ability to live the leisured
life, the life of thought and meditation, when
he may sit apart from the noise and cares
of the present day.

The rush and worry of the Western world seem
to have penetrated even to the women's court-
yard, and there is no doubt that the new
China will be Westernized in every depart-
ment of her being. But we who love China
hope that she will not change too rapidly,
that she will take what is necessary for her
happiness from the knowledge and the mode
of life of the Occident, but that she will
touch it with her own individuality, making
it a real part of her and not simply becoming
an imitation of the alien people by, whom she
is surrounded.

270 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

There is a charm about old China^ and there
is more than a charm about the old-time
secluded Chinese women, who have been pro-
tected and guarded from life's worries and
battles, until they represent all that is most
beautiful and feminine and demand the chivalry
of the men of the world.

Let the West come to China with all its
modem inventions and its politics and educa-
tional policies, but let us always be able to
find within its quiet courtyards the quiet, sweet-
faced woman of China.

CHAPTER XVIII

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME

I HAVE been eight times to Japan, living in the
big European hotels in Yokohama, Tokio, Kobe,
and Nagasaki, stopping for days at a time in the
native inns in the interior, or visiting at the homes
of friends. I decided that my ninth trip to the
little island would be different ; consequently we
planned a few months' stay in some out-of-the-
way place where we could keep house and live
d la Japonaise. We had heard of the beauties of
Hakodate, the most northern port of any size in
Japan, and obtaining a letter to the American
Consul, we wrote him asking if it were possible
for him to find us a furnished Japanese house for
the summer months. We were delighted to hear
a few days later that he had found a place for us,
the summer home of a rich mferchant, situated
on the mountain -side, overlooking the sea, and
surrounded by giant cryptomerias and pines.
Needless to say, we were soon on our way to this
paradise.

There were only four berths in the sleeping-
car on the Northern Express, and we engaged

271

272 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

two, but were not given the opportunity of using
them. At one of the stations a prince with his
retinue came on the train and pre-empted the
entire car. He used only one of the berths, as
no one could sleep over him, nor evidently near
him, and on all the long journey he selfishly
occupied the room by himself, while we, in com-
pany with the half-dozen men composing his
suite, had to fit ourselves into a tiny compartment
that should have only accommodated four. The
men removed their elaborate outer robes, curled
themselves into comfortable positions, and
smoked and chatted or slept until a station of
any importance was neared, when they donned
their gowns, threw around their necks a long,
stiff piece of silk on which was embroidered the
Imperial chrysanthemum, and prepared to receive
the delegation of townspeople who were always
at the station to present an address to his Imperial
Highness, or to send in an elaborate meal, served
on beautifully lacquered trays.

I had a good look at the prince on his entrance,
and found him exactly like the representations
of the daimios of olden times that we see on the
fans and tea-boxes. He had the long, slim, pale
face of the aristocrat, absolutely different from the
round-faced Japanese who comprise the greatest
proportion of the island's population. He looked
as if he might almost belong to another race.
I was told by one of his men that he represented
to many thousands of the people a god, as in his
branch of the family a certain godhead had

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 273

descended from father to son. When the train
stopped for any length of time at a station, the
people came in crowds and knelt, touching their
heads to the ground, and one old lady kept
bowing and holding up her hands, with the tears
streaming down her face at the joy of beholding
so great a divinity. He looked at them without
seeing them at all, never showing by any motion
or sign that there was anything to be seen except
the distant hills . I do not see how it was possible
for any human being to look so thoroughly im-
personal at a crowd of bowing, worshipping
people, when he knew he was the object of all
the adoration. Yet he looked at them as if their
faces were windows and their back hair the
landscape.

Train travel is interesting in Japan, if one will
travel in the ordinary day coach and watch the
people. The Japanese are great travellers, and
the clack-clack of their wooden clogs makes a
deafening noise at the stations, especially on the
bridges leading over the tracks. One sees whole
families going for an outing or on a visit to a
distant relative. They come on the train with
bundles and packages— most mysterious things
done up in large squares of cloth. They drop
their shoes before the seat and curl their feet
under them, and proceed thoroughly to enjoy
themselves. The seats run lengthwise of the
cars, and often a little woman gets tired of look-
ing out of the windows or at her fellow-passen-
gers opposite, and, turning her back on the car

18

274 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and sitting practically upright, will lean her face
against the side of the window and go to sleep.
The manner in which they can sit upon their feet
for hours impresses a foreigner. At the larger
stations tea in tiny pots, with a little porcelain
cup, is brought in by the salesmen, and " bento,"
the lunch of cold rice, pickles, and fish of some
description, is sold in neat boxes, the dainty limch
only costing ten cents, including a pair of new
wooden chop -sticks. The Japanese masses, like
their prototypes everywhere, enjoy eating in
public, and the car is filled with the divers and
sundry odours of fruit, sweets, tea, and food.
They are not noisy, and always most polite, arid
because of the dainty clothes of the women and
children, and the variety of their colouring, a
few hours can be spent quite well in studying
travelling Japanese close at hand. At one station
a party of pilgrims came on, dressed in white.
They belonged to some club in a far northern
village whose members paid a small assessment
each week, and each year lots were chosen to
judge who should benefit by the annual pilgrim-
age to some famous shrine or to Mount Fuji. The
lucky winners in the lottery joined other pilgrims,
donned the pilgrim's dress, and under the direc-
tion of a guide made the one great visit of their
lives, the wonders of which they would be able
to tell their amazed neighbours when they
returned. These would listen with interest, as
it might be their good fortune to draw the lucky
number the coming year.

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 275

At the end of our long train ride, Amorri, we
went on the small boat bound for Hakodate,
where we were met by the Consul, a jolly, big,
whole-hearted man, who took us, metaphorically
speaking, at once to his bosom and became as a
long-lost brother. His wife, much to our sur-
prise, was a tiny little Japanese woman, no bigger
than a good-sized doll, and as pretty as a picture.
They looked so incongruous together that one
was inclined to smile. He weighed at least
250 lb., was over six feet tall; and I should
think that when dressed in all her finery, Mrs.
Consul might have weighed 85 lb. She was a
well-educated, well-informed little woman, who
needed all her charm and tact to keep her unruly
family in order. It was a big one, the last, a
boy, being the pride of the father's heart, and
as nearly spoiled as the clever mother would
allow him to be by his worshipping father.
When I knew them better it was a joy to me to
see how she managed these children. The father,
who had been at one time captain of a sailing
vessel, always spoke to them as if they were at
the top of a mast on a wintry night with a
cyclone blowing. Tommy, the irrepressible,
would get up on the window seat, and his father
would hail him in a voice that could be heard
by the boats coming from Kamschatka :
" Tommy, get out of that window seat ; you'll
break your neck." Tommy would not move;
again his father's stentorian tone would offend the
evening air. The quiet little mother would turn

276 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

and give a nod of her pretty head to Tommys,
and Tommy would immediately climb down from
his perch and proceed to behave himself as young
boys should.

The Consulate was partly foreign and partly
Japanese, and the children while at home in the
morning dressed in kimona and wooden clogs,
but in the afternoon they were gay in " home "
dresses and resplendent in hair ribbons, only
showing by the little turn of the eyes that they
were members of their mother's race.

Soon after our arrival we went to see the place
that was to be our home for the next few months.
We did not see the house until we came to the
great gateway with its pointed roof leading into
a path shaded by giant cryptomerias, completely
guarding the house from view of the passer-by.
This hillside garden contained about five acres
of land, in which were winding pathways, giant
pine-trees, terraces of flowers, and here and there
a tori, a huge bronze stork, a grim stone lantern,
or a calmly reposing Buddha to show us we were
in the land of Nippon. We looked out over
the northern ocean, dotted here and there with
the sails of fishing-boats, or saw the smoke of
a steamer coming from Kamschatka, Saghlain,
or some of those mysterious northern ports, the
names of which were only places on a map.
After listening for awhile to the murmur of the
surf, we visited the interior of the house, which
contained five rooms. The furniture consisted
of the matting on the floor, the sliding " shojis,"

1^

„^_1^

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 277

the fire-boxes, the cooking utensils, and dishes
for the serving of the meals. It was necessary
for us to buy our " futons "—that is, our bedding ;
but otherwise the home was completely furnished
d la Japonaise. The servant problem was easily
solved, as the daughter of the gardener wished
to be our maid, the gardener would run our
errands, and his wife would be the general super-
intendent of the place. I expected to do^ the
cooking, as the time would be too short in Hako-
date to train a man in matters culinary. We
were soon installed, and then passed pleasant
days in dolce far niente, spending our mornings
in trips to the seashore, watching the fishermen
come in with their boatloads of squids. Their
arrival was the signal for all the women and
children of the village to flock to the shore and
unload the boats, then, after cleaning and press-
ing these ugly fish, hang them upon lines to dry,
making the whole ocean front as far as the eye
could see a miniature wash-Monday. We were
not allowed to climb the mountain -sides except
to a certain distance, as the hills were heavily
fortified, and at sudden turns we were met by
great signs which stated plainly in English,
French, German, Japanese, and Russian that
further explorations were forbidden. We never
tried to disobey the laws in Japan, as these little
people are vigorous in their punishment of offen-
ders, to whatever race they may belong, and I
feel that they have been justified in upholding the
manhood of their people. In India and in China

278 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

you see the white man treat the native with bar-
barous cruelty. While travelling once in India
our servant was making up the bed in the com-
partment we had engaged on the train. A white
man entered, and without one word of explana-
tion, grabbed our man and beat and kicked him
and nearly threw him out of the car. In reply to
our indignant demands as to the cause of his
ill-treatment of our servant, he said that he
thought the man had made a mistake in the
berth and was taking one for which he had paid.
I said afterwar'd to Ali, " Why did you not strike
him when he treated you so brutally ? " Ali
replied : " Oh, mem-sahib, he was a white man.
If I had touched him I would have lain many
long days in prison." In China also, on one hot
day in August I saw a rickshaw coolie, naked to
the waist, with the perspiration running down his
face in streams, running swiftly with a heavy
man inside his two-wheeled carriage. In pass-
ing by a crowded corner, he brushed against
a white man, who was having his afternoon stroll .
The white man angrily turned, and, grabbing the
coolie by his hair, beat him across his bare back
with his cane until he stopped from sheer ex-
haustion. The panting, perspiring coolie was
helpless as he could not drop the shafts, and so
was compelled to take the punishment. His
patron in the carriage, a richly-dressed Chinese,
dared not interfere because he also was a native
and understood there was no court of justice
when it was a question of a white man's word

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 279

against that of the yellow man. They have a
saying in China, that when a Chinese walks along
the sidewalk of his own city of Shanghai, he is
pushed into the middle of the road by the Ameri-
can, who only laughs at him, by the Englishman,
who swears at him, and by the German, who
kicks him, but— he is pushed into the middle of
the road. This could not happen in Japan, as
the Japanese courts punish severely any one who
dares to lay his hand in violence upon a Japanese,
however lowly may be his station or however
strong may be the provocation. While we were
in Yokohama, an officer of an American ship had
his hand severely hurt through the carelessness of
a Japanese longshoreman. In his pain and first
flush of anger he knocked the Japanese down,
and for his impatience was compelled to remain
six months in jail. His captain and his Consul
tried their best to help him, but it was in vain,
and he saw his ship sail away without him .

I came very near sharing "his fate while in
Hakodate. The fisherman came to our doors each
morning with his enormous baskets of fish swung
over his shoulders. The maid, her mother, and
myself, spent many interesting moments in turn-
ing over the scaly contents of his baskets in
order to make our choice amongst the varied
assortment he had for sale. I paid him by the
week, and one morning was called to the kitchen
by an indignant maid, who said the fisherman had
greatly overcharged me. The amount was far
too small, it seemed to me, to cause such keen

280 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

excitement, and I intended to dismiss the man,
saying I would pay him, but employ him no
more. I went over to a bucket of water, and
taking up the long-handled dipper to take a
drink, and not noticing that it was broken, I
gave it a little shake toward the fisherman, and
said, " Oh, go away, and don't make so much
noise." The cup part of the dipper flew off and
hit the indignant fisherman in the eye, whereupon
he immediately shouldered his baskets and
started for the magistrate. Needless to say, I
was frightened, and I immediately donned my
bonnet and started for the Consulate. The Con-
sul heard my story and sadly shook his head :
" If you really hit that coolie and he has you
arrested, I can do nothing. It will only make
matters worse to have me to interfere, so the
best thing for you to do is to go with me and
find that fisherman ; offer him half of your estate,
but don't get mixed up with the law in Japan."
For two hours we haunted side -streets, where
at last we found our man, and, after a small
money payment and a promise to take fish from
him for the rest of the season, and practically
binding myself to listen to his insolence as long
as I was in Hakodate, he grudgingly assented to
withdraw his charge.

These itinerant dealers make housekeeping in
Japan easy. Men clad in blue cotton coats with
great straw hats on their heads and baskets piled
high with vegetables, come to the door each
morning ; one passing along the streets both

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 281

night andi day can hear the cries of the
travelUng vendors, selUng all that the average
householder may require .

Hakodate is filled with crows— monstrous,
black, impertinent thieves, who will come boldly
into the kitchen and take the fish from out the
frying-pan. Mornings I would take a pan of
corn, and in the rear of the house upon the hill-
side, and hitting upon the pan's side with a spoon,
would soon be surrounded by hundreds of these
beady-eyed birds, that are almost considered
sacred in this province. They were so tame that
they would fight at my feet for the kernels, and
I would be compelled to push them from my lap
and then, much to the maid's disgust, the greedy
birds would follow me into the house.

We used to play a game, the crows and I. I
would pound on the pan until I had summoned
fifty or sixty, then I would start the song,
" Onward, Christian Soldiers," and rapping on the
pan for accompaniment, would march solemnly
at the head of my serious, expectant army, up
hill and down dale, through the house, out again,
down the small paths, until even the maid who
considered the crows her enemies, would be com-
pelled to laugh.

Soon I found that if I was to live as
the Japanese, I certainly should dress in the
clothes of the 'Country, as European clothes and
shoes are not comfortable in Japanese houses.
All my friends were Japanese, and I found I
must conform to their customs so far as was pos-

282 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

sible if I would be happy and not an object of
curiosity. Consequently I went with the wife
of our Consul and passed two delightful hours
in choosing kimonas, which, if I had been allowed
to exercise my taste, would have been far too
gay for one of my years. I always associated
kimonas with pinks and blues and riotous
colours, but I found that, being a married
woman, I must confine my choice of colours
to greys and browns and soft -toned mauves.
I could indulge my love for ornamentation in
the obis, as these may be of stiff brocades in rose
and gold, or purple and gold, or, in fact, any
colour one may wish. I found also that the
Japanese dress itself may not be expensive, but
the price of the obis is ruinous to a small pocket-
book. It is in these last articles of adornment
that the Japanese lady spends her husband's
money. She buys obis and puts them away in
her treasure-chest, only bringing them to the
light of day on occasions of festivity. The tying
of the obi is by no means a simple process, and
I could never learn its intricacies. The end must
be of a certain length, the big bow must be just
so correctly arranged or else it shows that one is
not a la mode. My friends were always lengthen-
ing an end or tying a little tighter the roll that
gave the obi the correct tilt at the back. I found
it necessary to practise privately for several days
walking in the clogs before I dared try them in
public. The Japanese have three kinds of clogs
—high ones raised by two pieces of wood three or

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 283

four inches from the ground and with a piece
of leather as a mud -guard for use in wet weather ;
another pair of dress clogs were necessary, with
the plain wooden sole covered with fine matting ;
and still another pair of sandals, which were for
use around the garden or in places that did not
necessitate rough walking. The two pieces of
cord that pass between the great and the first
toe, and by which the clog is held on the foot,
compelled me to wear the Japanese sock, which
is made of white cotton, like a mitten, the great
toe being separated from the rest of the foot.
These socks are short, only coming to the ankle,
and are fastened by two or three metal clasps.
The shoes are never worn in the house, always
being left at the doorways, the thick cotton sole
of the stocking protecting the foot. It would be
as insulting to walk on the clean matting of a
Japanese house as it would be to walk on the
snowy damask of your hostess's dining-table.
After a few falls and many awkward movements
I found the Japanese foot-covering most comfort-
able, the foot being absolutely free ; but I soon
learned that my American stride did not conform
to the close-fitting dress of the kimona, as with
it the feet should not be set apart and one should
slightly " toe in " in order that the folds of the
kimona do not fly open. In one way Japanese
dress is not expensive, as the Japanese lady,
whatever her rank or wealth, does not wear
jewellery— no necklaces, nor bracelets, nor ear-
rings, nor brooches ; even rings are an in-

284 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

novation brought in with foreigners. Her only
jewels are the clasp of her obi fastener, generally
a piece of chased gold, and a couple of orna-
mental hairpins or a comb for the hair.

I did not attempt the hair-dressing, as that is
a most complicated affair, and must be left to
the attentions of a hair-dresser, who comes to the
homes once or twice a week and makes the
elaborate coiffures that add so much to the beauty
of a Japanese face. Each age has its coiffure,
and a woman never tries to disguise her age in
Japan, because by her dress and style of hair-
dressing she frankly confesses the stage she has
reached in life. There is the baby with her
shaven head, then the little queue tied on the
crown ; afterward the hair is cut square across the
neck, like the little dolls we see in the London
shops ; then when she is ten years old the hair
is divided and made into a bow knot tied with a
piece of ornamental paper. As she arrives at
young ladyhood there is the elaborate " shimada,"
which in the case of the young woman is very
large, and, if Nature has not been generous,
helped out with tresses bought in the shops . The
married woman has a special coiffure which
grows smaller with age, until, when she is a
matron of forty, the age when the woman of the
Orient considers herself an old woman, it is quite
small. If the woman is so unfortunate as to
lose her husband, she cuts her hair, and thus
shows all the world that she is a widow. The
Japanese mature early, and old age comes to

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 285

them sooner than it does to people from the West.
A Japanese proverb says that man lives but fifty
years, and rarely does his span exceed seventy
years. In former days old age began at fifty,
and a man then considered himself unfit for busi-
ness and made over his name and property to
his son, passing the rest of his life in ease without
the cares of business. Old age is not a burden
to the Japanese woman, but is a paradise to be
looked for longingly. Then she, who has per-
haps been subservient to the mother of her
husband all her married life, knows that she will
be the head of her household, with her sons and
daughters ready to obey her, and, because of her
age and motherhood, respected and holding a
position in life denied her as a young woman.

Many of these quiet, soft -voiced mothers of
Japan were brought to call upon me by Mrs.
Consul. They taught me how to serve the tea,
the proper way of bowing, and even tried to
make of me a good follower of the Law by taking
me with them to the temples and visiting shrines
and holy places. One kindly woman brought
me a tablet for my " august-spirit-dwelling,"
which she placed in a tiny model of a Shinto
temple and put above the inner doorway of the
hall, where I was supposed to bum before it
each morning candles and incense, and keep the
little cups for rice and water filled. I was well
provided with gods, as another friend gave me a
B.uddha for my household shrine, and all the para-
phernalia of service with which to worship him.

286 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Below us on the hillside was the swagger tea-
house of the town, and the tinkle of the samisens
and the singing of the pretty girls came to us
faintly until late into the night. This pretty
music, mingled with the sound of the surf upon
the shore, was always the last sound we heard at
night after the maid had placed the night-light,
the tobacco-box, and the brazier for the tea at
our head, and then had knelt and said " Good-
night." In the morning we were wakened by
a softly murmured " O Hayo," and 'a tray of
tea was respectfully slid across the matting to
give us strength to begin the morning's work.

While in Hakodate I made the acquaintance of
many Japanese ladies and learned their customs
and the manner of their life, which is controlled
by thoughts and ideals entirely different from
those entertained by women of the Western
world. I think I much prefer the woman of
the old school, with her charming manners, her
elaborate bows, and her antiquated superstitions
and beliefs, to her daughter, who, like her sister
of China, India, and Egypt, is trying too hard to
wear clothes not made for her, and to adapt
customs and usages for which she is not formed
temperamentally or physically. The customs of
the modern world will come to the woman of
Japan, but they must be adapted to her con-
ditions and not be taken en masse.

One of the most beautiful characteristics of
the Japanese is their reverence for old age and
their intense love for children. Japan has justly

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 287

been called the baby's paradise, and certainly
in no country does the home life so thoroughly
revolve around the children as it does in Japan.
Like all Eastern women, the desire for children
is the most ardent wish of the Japanese woman's
heart. The childless wife will move heaven and
earth in her desire to gain the blessing of mother-
hood. She will visit watering-places, offer
prayers at temples, make long, irksome pilgrim-
ages, wear amulets, drink strange decoctions, and
allow herself to be imposed upon and robbed by
every charlatan who claims a knowledge that
will help her gain the craving of her heart— a
child. It will, therefore, be imagined with what
eagerness the arrival of a little stranger is
awaited in the home, and the happiest day in the
girl -wife's life is the day on which they tell her
she is the mother of a son.

As soon as the event takes place, a special
messenger is dispatched to notify friends and rela-
tives while letters of announcement are sent to
those who are not so closely related in friendship
to the family . All thus notified must then make a
visit to the new baby and either send or bring with
them a present. Toys or clothing, always accom-
panied by eggs or a fish to bring good luck, come
in great profusion, and when baby is about
thirty days old, return presents must be made to
all who remembered him at time of birth. When
baby is seven days old he receives his name, and
when he is thirty-one— or if a girl, when she is
thirty -three— days old, the first important occasion

288 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

of his life must be observed. He is dressed in
his best and gayest garments, and, accompanied
by members of his family, is taken to a terriple
and placed under the protection of one of the
Shinto deities, who is supposed to become the
guardian of the child through life. This is a
day for present-giving also, and one especial gift
must come to the child, a papier mkch6 dog,
which is always placed at the head of the child's
bed at night as a charm against evil influences.

The infant should not walk until it is a year
old ; but if it is so precocious that it commences
to toddle before that time, a small bag of rice is
laid upon its back, and it is made to stumble
and fall. To walk before its first birthday is
a sign that it will die young or else become a
resident of a distant land. There are many super-
stitions connected with the early life of a baby.
If he sucks his fingers before he does his thumb,
he will be a help to his parents in their old age.
If he crawls out of his covers at night, he will
rise in the world, but if he snuggles down in the
bed and is inclined to crawl towards the foot,
it augurs that a downward course is his fate in
life. If many of the children of a family have
died in infancy, the nervous mother will make
for this last gift of the gods a dress composed of
thirty-three pieces of cloth collected from thirty-
three different families, or she will shave his head
until he is seven years old, or give him a girl's
name instead of a boy's, thus deceiving the gods
who covet her treasure. If baby has prickly

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 289

heat, the first egg plant of the season is hung
over the door ; while suspending the empty rice-
pot, still hot, over the baby's head for a few
moments will make him' immune from that afflic-
tion of childhood, the measles. It passes its
days tied to the back of little brother or sister or
nurse until it can walk, then when it is two years
old the fifteenth of November is a great day for
all the babies. They are taken to the temple
and the blessing of the gods is invoked, and the
priests purify their bodies by waving over them
a sacred wand. This is the occasion for showing
new clothes and calling upon all friends, who
make presents to the child.

At three or four years children are sent to a
kindergarten, and at six years they enter the
Primary Schools, where there is a six-years' com-
pulsory course for both boys and girls. Then
it only rests with the parents whether the child
receives a higher education, as there are in all
towns and villages a Middle School for boys and
a High School for girls. The average girl stops
her education with the Primary School, or at most
with the High School, but there is a University
in Tokio where the girl may complete her edu-
cation and fit herself for a vocation. But if she
has been six years at Primary School and four
years at High School, she is sixteen years old,
and of a marriageable age, although the average
girl does not marry until she is eighteen or nine-
teen.

There are a great many accomplishments

19

290 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

which it is necessary for a Japanese girl of good
family to know. The knowledge of needlework
is so general that it really is not considered an
accomplishment. But the art of letter-writing
must be known by all accomplished young ladies,
and the tea ceremony, which is the strictest
and most complicated of all the ceremonies
which surround the cultured Japanese, must be
thoroughly learned by the daughter of the house.
Each movement is regulated by custom, and a
mistake in turn of hand or position of the body
or the omission of any of the minute details in
regard to the bows and salutations in offering,
receiving, and returning the cups would show a
lack of proper training. The young girl is taught
the arrangement of flowers, which is an art by
itself in Japan. In the sitting-room of a
Japanese home there is a single vase of flowers
sitting in the tiny alcove, and they would lose
half of their attraction if they were not in some
manner symbolical in tone and colour with the
picture upon the kakemono which hangs above
them. The young girl is often taught to play
upon the koto, a kind of zither, although the
national musical instrument is the samisen, which
is played everywhere— at home, in story-tellers'
halls and theatres, and at every tea-house party.
Girls start to leam this instrument at a very early
age, because it is necessary to learn it while the
fingers are still pliant. It takes time to learn
these instruments, as there are no scores and the
tunes must be committed to memory. Women

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 291

teachers come to the home to teach the girls in
all these arts, and often the samisen teacher has
been a famous geisha, whose support now is
teaching tiie music that once made her welcome
at the dinner-parties of gay Japan.

After mastering the accomplishments, her
business in life is now to marry, and few Japanese
maidens think seriously of any other lot in life
than that of marrying and becoming the mothers
of future Japanese. Japan is more progressive
than any other Oriental country, if we except
Burmah, in that it allows the girl to exercise a
certain amount of choice in the selection of a
husband . There are never cases of love matches,
but if she positively objects to a man who is
proposed to her, she is seldom forced to marry
him. It would be thought most immodest if
she refused to marry a man until she loved him,
as love is supposed to come with marriage and
the advent of the children. Only simple tolera-
tion is expected before the marriage. The offices
of a go-between are asked to assist in the search
for a husband or wife, unless the match is made
by friends of the interested parties. When the
future husband has been selected, the go-
between, who must always be a married man, as
his wife takes an important part in the transac-
tions, brings about a meeting of the young couple
as if by accident. They may be strolling in a
garden looking at the hanging wistaria, or meet at
a theatre, where the families are introduced, and
the two most concerned have a chance to take

292 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

a good look at each other, and the next day, when
the anxious match-maker comes to the house to
learn whether his choice has met with favour,
they will give their consent, or the match will b6
broken off, and the go-between will start again
the hunt for an eligible alliance. If everything
is satisfactory, a lucky day is appjointed for the
formal proposal, presents are exchanged, and
then all look forward to the wedding. A couple
of days before the wedding the bride's trousseau
and household gods are sent to her new home,
and its elaborateness! is: only limited by the
father's wealth. Yet there are some things con-
sidered indispensable in the outfit of a bride,
such as a bureau, a writing-table, a work-box,
two of the little trays on which meals are served,
together with the full dining outfit, and two or
more complete sets of bed furnishings. If she
is of a rich family, quite likely the clothing she
will bring with her will last her entire Hfe, as
styles do not change so radically as to make
gowns go so completely out of fashion that
they cannot be worn. A wedding is a most ex-
pensive proceeding for the father of the bride,
as each member of the groom's family— father,
mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins,
even the servants— must all receive a present to
mark the joyous occasion. The wedding itself
is in the presence of only a few witnesses, and
consists in a few formal acts, the most important
of which is the drinking " three times three"
cups of saki together. To make the marriage

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 293

conform to the laws of Japan, the bride's name is
removed from her family register and transferred
to that of her husband's family.

After the ceremony there are entertainments
in the new home and at the home of the bride's
parents, and then the couple settle down into
the married state for two or three months, when
the ultra -smart give a series of entertainments
to the friends who had no formal announcement
of the marriage.

The young vdfe does not have the happiness
of setting up an establishment of her own, but
she must go to the home of her husband's father.
The mother-in-law question is a very serious one
in Japan, because she is absolutely the head of
the household, and the young wife has to
submit in all things to her mother-in-law's will.
This is especially serious for the modern Japanese
girl, who perhaps hajs been educated in the
Government school, if she is compelled to go
to the home of a conservative old-time woman.
Naturally, the mother cannot understand why the
ideas with which she herself was brougjit up
should not be good enough for the other, and
finds fault with, what are in her eyes, outlandish
ways introduced by the new regime. These con-
servative women are alwa^is loud in praise of
the old state of things, and believe that the
world is going to ruin, socially, morally, and
physically, because of the innovations brought
into their homes by their progressive sons
and daughters.

294 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

In addition to the parents of her husband,
the wife has to win the affection of his brothers,
sisters-in-law, and sisters, and her life is often
made intolerable by the envies, jealousies, . and
petty faultfindings of the many women beneath
the new roof -tree. The patriarchal life prevails
in Japan as in all Eastern countries, and the
successful man finds he must support a crowd
of less successful relatives, whose claims are not
admitted by law, but whose appeals on the score
of kinship cannot be ignored, as custom allows
those related by blood or marriage to look for
help to the least unfortunate among them. The
new civil code forces the support of parents,
brothers, sisters, and other near relatives upon
the head ^of the household, in addition to that
of his wife and children. Thus a man is handi-
capped in life and has to spend the money he
might otherwise use in educating his children
in the support of uncles, avmts, and cousins, and
perhaps a host of his wife's relations. From
the social point of view this is undoubtedly an
excellent system, as it relieves the nation of the
support of its .poor, but it bears heavily upon
the individual, and many a young man's ambi-
tion has been shattered and his road to success
blocked by the sordid cares and petty troubles
caused by the necessity of maintaining a large
household.

The great authority on the conduct of women
who marry was written by a Japanese scholar,
based on the teaching of the Chinese sages. In

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 295

it the wife is told she must give unconditional
obedience to her husband, who is in every respect
her superior and the absolute lord and master
of her body and soul ; whatever he does is right
and she may not even murmur. She occupies
a position in her husband's household practically
of an upper servant. She must not frequent
public resorts, nor go sight-seeing with the wealth
her husband may obtain, and until she is forty
years old is not to be seen in company, but
to remain at home attending to her household and
her children. This sounds very well, but women
are women the world over ; and although
Japanese wives are gentle, docile, and obedient,
yet they have a virility and strength of character
that compel the respect of their husbands, and
in their own domain their word is law.

In the olden time each Japanese girl was sup-
posed to know the precepts contained in a book
called " Greater Learning for Women," written
by a famous scholar several hundred years ago.
For nearly two hundred years it was one of the
indispensable articles that a bride took with her
to her new home, but the present modern
Japanese maiden knows very little of the
" Greater Learning." I am afraid, indeed, that
she is. more thoroughly conversant with a
parody of these famous precepts, which has
been written by a young man of modern Japan.
This is so radical that it is forbidden in thq
libraries of the mission schools in the fear
that the Japanese girl will imbibe too early

296 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

the tendencies fatal ^o the happiness of
the Eastern woman, as she takes her first step,
from her sedudfed doorway into the path that
leads to the higher learning of the Western
world.

Japanese women are womanly, kindly, gentle,
and pretty, and perhaps the,)5 owe this gentle-
ness and courtesy to the precepts taught by their
old sages.

According to Shingoro Takaishi, in his
" Wisdom and Women of Japan," the famous
moralist left the following instructions to help
women in their perilous journey through life—

" Seeing that it is a girl's destiny, on reaching
womanhood, to go to a new home, and live in
submission to her father-in-law, it is even more
incmnbent upon her than it is on a boy to receive
with aJl reverence her parents' instructions.
Should her parents, through their tenderness,
allow her to gJow up self-willed, she will in-
fallibly show herself capricious in her husband's
house, and thus alienate his affection ; while, if
her father-in-law be a man of correct principles,
the girl will find the yoke of these principles
intolerable. She will hate and decry her father-
in-law, and the end of these domestic dissen-
sions will be her dismissal from her husband's
house and the covering of herself with ignominy.
Her parents, forgetting the faulty education they
gave her, may, indeed, lay all the blame on
the father -in law. But they will be in error ;
for the whole disaster should rightly be

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 297

attributed to the faulty education the girl
received from her parents.

" More precious in a woman is a virtuous heart
than a face of beauty. The vicious woman's
heart is ever excited ; she glares wildly around
her^ she vents her anger on others, her words
are liarsh and her accent vulgar. When she
speaks it is to set herself above others, to
upbraid others, to envy others, to be puffed up
with individual pride, to jeer at others, to outdo
others — all things at variance with the way in
which a woman should walk. The only quali-
ties that befit a woman are gentle obedience,
chastity, mercy, and quietness.

'" A woman has no particular lord. She must
look to her husband as her lord, and must serve
him with all worship and reverence, not despising
or thinking lightly of him. The great lifelong
duty of a woman is obedience.

" A woman shall be divorced for disobedience
to her father-in-law or mother-in-law. A woman
shall be divorced if she fail to bear children,
the reason for this rule being that women are
sought in marriage for the purpose of giving
men posterity. A barren woman should, how-
ever, be retained if her heart be virtuous and
her conduct correct and free from jealousy, in
which case a child of the same blood must be
adopted ; neither is there any just cause for a
man to divorce a barren wife if he have children
by a concubine. Lewdness is a reason for
divorce. Jealousy is a reason for divorce.

298 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

Leprosy or any, like foul disease is a reason for
divorce. A woman shall be divorced who, by
talking overmuch and prattling disrespectfully,
disturbs the harmony of kinsmen and brings
trouble on her household. A woman shall be
divorced who is addicted to stealing.

"All the ' Seven Reasons for Divorce 'were
taught by the sage. A woman once married
and then divorced has wandered from the
' way,' and is covered with great shame, even
if she should enter into a second union with a
man of wealth and position,

"It is the chief duty of a girl living in the
parental house to practise filial piety towards
her father and mother. But after marriage her
duty is to honour her father-in-law and
mother-in-law, to honour them beyond her
father and mother, to love and reverence them
with all ardour, and to tend them with practise
of every filial piety^. While thou honourest thine
own parents, think not lightly of thy father-in-
law. Never should a woman fail, night and
morning, to pay h^r respects to her father-in-
law and mother-in-law. Never should she be
remiss in performing any tasks they may re-
quire of her. With all reverence must she
carry out, and never rebel against, her father-
in-law's commands. On every point must she
inquire of her father-in-law and mother-in-law,
and abandon herself to their direction. Even
if thy father-in-law and mother-in-law be pleased
to hate and vilify thee, be not angriy with them.

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 299

and murmur not. If thou carry piety towards
them to its utmost limits, and minister^ to them
in all sincerity, it cannot be but that they will
end by becoming friendly to thee."

There is a sword of Damocles always hang-
ing over the head of the Japanese woman — that
is, the fear of divorce. Among the higher
classes the dread of scandal and gossip serves
as a restraint upon the too free use of the
power of divorce, but even now one meets many
respectable and respected persons who, some
time in their life, have gone through such an
experience. Obtaining a divorce is not such a
complicated affair as it is in America. It
is enough that the parties agree to separate and
make a declaration, witnessed by two reputable
witnesses, at a IjOcal magjistrate's office, and the
divorce takes place by mutual consent. As in
the case of marriage the consent of the parents
or guardians of a girl under twenty-five years
of age and a man who is under thirty must be
obtained, so this consent of parents or guardians
is necessary before a divorce may be g'ranted.
Then the domicile of the wife is retransferred in
the books of the registrar from the domicile of
the family in which she was married to that
of her original family. If one of the parties
concerned refuse to give their consent to the
divorce an application is made to the courts.
There are several grounds upon which judicial
divorce is granted^-first, for bigamy ; secondly,
the wife may be divorced for adultery, but not

300 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

the husband, unless the crime has been com-
mitted with a married woman, when the un-
faithful wife and her lover axe liable to penal
servitude for a term not exceeding two years,
if the charge is brought by the outraged
husband. The man cannot be punished alone;
the woman must share his fate. As in many
European coimtries, marriage is forbidden
between the respondent and the co-respondent
in a divorce case.

Another, and one of the chief causes for
divorce in Japan, are the complications that
naturally arise from the many people living in
one house. Either party may seek divorce if
ill-treated or insulted by the parents or grand-
parents of the other, and mothers-in-law, with
their hard tongues and bitter words, are the
frequent causes of separation of husband and
wife. One provision of the law which serves
to make most mothers endure any evil of their
married life rather tlran sue for divorce is the
fact that the children belong to the father, and
the mother returns childless to her father's house .
In this country, where the woman is economically
dependent upon her men-folk, even if she were
allowed to take the children, quite likely they
would not be made welcome in a home where
there are always too many mouths to feed ;
therefore the Japanese mother puts up witlh many
brutalities and heartaches in order to keep with
her the only bright things she has in life^ her
children .

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 301

The Japanese wife leads a very busy life. In
all but the very wealthiest amd, most aristocratic
families the wife and daughters do a large part
of the housework. In a house with no furni-
ture, no carpets, no pictures, no stoves or
furnaces, no windows to wash, no latest styles to
be imitated in the making, of clothing, there is
not so much work in the care of a house as
there is in the Western world, where the rooms
are filled with a multitude of unnecessary articles
that seem only made to give toil to women.
But because of the lack of conveniences it takes
time to properly care for the rooms in a Japanese
house. Every morning there are the beds to be
rolled up and placed in the closets, the mosquito-
nets to be taken down, the rooms to be swept,
dusted, and aired ; and the veranda floor is
polished several times a day as if it were a
precious piece of silver. The cooking and wash-
ing of the dishes take a great deal of time, as
the former is done over a tiny charcoal stove
and the dishes are washed in cold water. There
is not a moment of time that the wife is idle,
as there is always the family sewing to be super-
intended, the mats and cushions to he re-
covered, the wadding to be renewed in the bed
coverings and the winter kimonas. Many of
the Japanese dresses must be taken to pieces
whenever they are washed, and the wet breadths
smoothed upon a board and placed in the sun
to dry. The careful housewife makes over the
older daughters' dresses for the younger

302 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

daughters, and these clothes are washed,
turned, dyed, and made over and over agiain
so long as there is a shred of the original material
left to work upon.

The Japanese believe that a woman passes
through three critical stages in her journey
through life. If she passes her nineteenth, her
thirty-third, and her thirty-seventh years safely,
she has a chance of living to a good old age
and seeing her children and her grandchildren
grow up around her. Her most critical year
is her thirty-third, apd not only this year
itself, but the] years immediately preceding
and following are considered inauspicious.
Consequently there are three years during
which period women will refrain as much
as possible from acts which may appear like
tempting Providence. When a woman attains
her sixtieth birthday it is an occasion for great
festivities, when she invites all her friends to
a dinner to celebrate this wonderful event. If
a man or womkn should have occasion to cele-
brate their seventieth birthday, they distribute
among their friends and relatives large red and
white cakes with the character signifying
" longevity " written upon them, and with each
increasing year the old man or woman gain in
the respect of their community.

When the last illness comes to father and
mother it would be considered most unfilial for
any of the children not to be present at the
parent's death -bed. When all is over the son

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 303

or the wife wets his lips with water, and so
universal is this custom that the expression "to
wet the dying lips with water " has come to
signify the tending of a patient in his last
illness. One of the reasons why the Japanese
believe that the wife should be yoimger than
the husband is that she may be able to fulfil
this last office for her loved one.

It is known that death is in the room by the
placing upside down of a screen before the bed,
and the quilt covering the body is reversed, the
foot covering the dead man's breast. A white
cloth is laid over the face, as its exposure would
be an obstacle to the soul's journey on its road
to the other world. Everything done for the
dead is the reverse of that done for the living ;
for example, in the tub for the last bath cold
water is poured first, then hot water added until
it is of the right temperature. The head is
shaved by touching it with the razor in small
patches instead of running it continuously as in
life . The burial garment is made by two women
relatives, sewing with the same piece of thread
in opposite directions, and the kimona is folded
from right to left instead of from left to right
as a man would wear it ordinarily. Mittens,
leggings, and sandals are worn, the sandals being
tied on the foot with the heel in the place of
the toe, to signify that the dead must not return,
drawn back by the love of the world. Around
the neck is suspended a bag of Buddhist charms,
and a small coin, or picture of a coin, with which

304 THE HAEIM AND THE PUEDAH

to pay, the ferr^iiman. If the wife dies, the
husband does not pubhcly mourn for her,
ahhough her children do ; but if the huisband
dies the wife should mourn the rest of hfer life,
and she often cuts off her long hair and places
it in the cofSSnt of her husband, showing! that
she resolves to be always faithful to his memorjs.
In a child's cofHn a doll is placed to keep the
child company on its first journey without mother
or father. The last rite is to cover the body
with incense-powder or dried aniseed, and then
it is ready for the funeral ceremonies.

A funeral procession in Japan is an imposing
affair. The corpse, in its palanquin or irt the
modern hearse, is preceded by men carrying large
white lanterns on poles, bundles of flowers stuck
in bamboo pedestals, stands of artificial flowers,
and birds in enormous cages, which are set free
at the temples as an act of merit. The priests,
friends, and relatives move slowly and sadlj^ to
the temple, in which there is a: service, thten
the bier is taken to the crematory b.y the dhief
mourner and the near relatives. The ashes are
removed the next day to their permanent home
in the public crematorium or in the temple
burying -ground of the family.

For fifty days after the death incense and
lights are kept burning before the tablet of the
deceased at his late home, and prayers are offered
at the grave for the same length of time. A
priest comes from the temple every seventh day
to offer incense and prayer with the sorrowing

JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 305

family, who believe that for fortyi-nine days the
spirit of their dead wanders in the dark space
that lies between this world and the next. Every
seventh day it makes a step forward and is helped
by the prayers of loved ones left behind. The
sorrowing wife is taught that the spirit cannot
tear itself away from its old home and hovers
over it, and unless it is absolutely necessary no
loving woman would remove from her home until
the forty-nine days were past, for fear of giving
sorrow to the spirit of her husband, if he did
not find her in the place where they had passed
together their years of happiness.

The dead are not quickly forgotten in Japan.
Memorial services take place the forty-eighth
day, the hundredth day, and the first anniversary
of the death, and services are held for even fifty
years. Lafcadio Hearn expresses the rever-
ence which these people give their loved ones
who have gone before them by saying : —

" Jn this worship we give the dead they are
made divine. And the thought of this tender
reverence will temper with consolation the -melan-
choly that comes with age to all of us. Never
in our Japan are the dead too quickly forgotten ;
by simple faith they are still thought to dwell
among their beloved and their place within the
home remains holy. When we pass to the land
of shadows we know that loving lips will nightly
murmur our names before the family shrine, that
our faithful ones will beseech us in their pain
and bless us in their joy. We will not be left

20

306 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

alone upon the hillside, but loving hands will
place before our tablet the fruit and flowers and
dainty, food that we were wont to like, and will
pour for us the fragrant cup of tea or amber
rice -wine. Strange changes are coming upon
this land, old customs are vanishing, old beliefs
are weakening, the thoughts of to-day will not
be the thoughts of to-morrow ; but of all this
we will know nothing. We dream that for us
as for our mothers the little lamps will burn
on through the generations ; we see in fancy
the yet unborn, the children of our children's
children, bowing their tiny heads and making
the filial obeisance before the tablet that bears
our family name."

CONCLUSION

The ocean that geographically divides the East
from the West is not more wide nor deep than
is that invisible ocean between the minds of the
woman of the Orient and the woman of the
Occident. A sympathetic understanding between
peoples whose ideals have been so differently
constructed, and who have had such radically
opposite training, is next to impossible. No
matter what the Western woman may do in the
hope of touching the emotional life of the woman
of the East, she soon finds that further progress
is barred, that a gate before unseen has closed,
shutting her out from the inner life.

I knew a very advanced woman in Southern
India who had broken caste and who went about
freely, mingling with both Europeans and Indians
with the same freedom as an American woman
would. She dressed in a costume partially
Indian and partially European, wore slippers, and
arranged her hair in the European fashion. One
day I went to her house rather earlier than the
usual hour for calling. I hardly recognized her,

307

308 THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH

as she was the Indian woman of the home,
dressed in a sari, her hair hanging down her
back in braids, and with heavy anklets over her
bare feet. She blushed and said: "Oh, I do
not want you to see me like this," and she did
not understand me when I told her that I felt
that I was seeing the real woman for the first
time.

I thought many times in my long residence
in the East that I had really entered into the life
and understood the thoughts, hoj>es, and ambi-
tions of the Eastern woman, when at some
thoughtless word or action on my part a wall
of fog would come between us, with a thick,
impenetrable, blanket -like mist, made up of
custom, tradition, and the results of environment,
and when it would lift we would find our little
boats far from each other on a sea of mutual
misunderstanding .

Despite our incapacity to enter into the soul
life of this ancient East, we find ourselves
fascinated and bewitched by the charm of these
secluded women of the Orient, who live a life
of instinctive unselfishness, their days given to
the making of happiness for others.

We say : " Must there always remain the width
of the world between the Eastern woman and
the woman of the West? Will the education
which is being grasped so eagerly by the woman
of the Orient lessen the distance, and will it
break down the barriers?" Only time will tell.
The children of the present boys and girls

CONCLUSION . 309

in school and college will have had the
foundation of the three generations of intellec-
tual training, and will have learned to take what
is best for them from Western knowledge and
use it as a means of breaking the iron bands of
ignorance, superstition, and loyalty to old-
time custom and tradition, which stands an im-
movable mountain in the pathway of true
friendship between the woman of the West
and the woman of the East.

Q'0

tISWIN ER0THEK3, LIMITED, THE GRESHASI PRESS, WOKING A»D LONDOM